Labels: self released
Review by: Andy Malcolm
You can’t move for the twiddly bands. A veritable sea of the buggers. I saw Reno Dakota supporting Football, etc in Ipswich of all places towards the end of the year and was rather impressed. The music was invigorated and excitable, with plenty of pace and a lot punkier than most bands doing this kind of thing. That meant it reminded me of Spy vs Spy. Which is cool, I’d much rather hear a band that sounds like Spy vs Spy than Algernon Cadwallader. This demo is almost a year old now though and although very accomplished, is a lot less interesting, relying on typical tropes of bands playing the twiddly indie, at times. “How To Start A Conversation” is the best song on here, it mixes up some lovely fast bits where the guitar tone and strained vocals remind me of Bells on Trike (GET IN!), and it gets super lovely when they bring the emo waltz out in the second half, you don’t hear that enough these days. Yet they also sprinkle in some hectic mathy moments early on that they really don’t need to do at all, given how great the rest of the song is. A lot of the rest of the demo is fairly generic, but when they aren’t twiddling too much they have pleasing, warm sound and the vocals are excellent through-out. I was looking forward to seeing them again in Norwich a couple of weeks ago to see how they were getting on, but they failed to turn up. Bummer.
Personally I hope they are able to expand on their sound a bit and not just play out a homage to their favourite bands. Actually, I’d prefer if they played out a homage to my favourite bands. Just kidding.