Labels: self released
Review by: Andy Malcolm
This one dropped on my doorstep, possibly with accompanying info, possibly not, I can’t find it anyway. So into the CD player it went, it certainly looked the part with it’s screened brown card case. And it hits. The beautiful twinkly intro of opener “Circus” is spellbinding, hooking me from the first moments – it’s slightly at odds with the intial vocals though. Over the course of this EP I massively prefer when the main singer is taking centre stage, with his almost spoken style wandering through the songs. However the first song relies more on oomph and dual vocals between two or three guys at once, and I just find that sort of thing terribly cheesey especially the dodgy gang vocals bits. Once I got my expectations in place though, it was all good. The main guys vocals are fantastic, the Scottish accent shines through and gives it a unique flavour. The songs are fairly straight forward, often repetetive with a warm bassline winding through to impart a little groove. There is no math in earshot, just well constructed songs that genuinely don’t rip any other band off. A clever feat! I guess there’s a bit of Stapleton (lazy Scottish comparison from me there), a bit of Promise Ring, and a lot of the band themselves. Most of the reviews on their Myspace seem to compare them to American Football which couldn’t be much further off target if it tried. I think it is refreshing and smartly different to most of their generic Yankee peers who rip Am-Foot off wholesale.
Is this a demo? It sure doesn’t sound like it, it’s relatively clean in an indie sense, certainly not lo-fi, and the well judged production suits it, with the vocals rolling over the music particularly well. What an impressive start, if I didn’t have my plate full with other shit to release I’d be hounding these guys for a 7″. If you are partial to well crafted, mid-paced indiemo, then this band should be in your ears.