Art Leads Me Stressing Into The Grave

It makes sense that I am spending my “week off” listening to a band called So Stressed. Instead of kicking back I am spending my week off, at work, doing work. Don’t ask. So some throat-shattering guttural punk is the best way to vent while pushing papers around a virtual box. The Sacramento trio are the first signing on Perfect Pussy leader Meredith Graves’ new label Honor Press, and their debut LP The Unlawful Trade of Greco-Roman Art does not disappoint. The rather esoteric album title belies one of the loudest, most brutal, most exhilarating albums I've heard this year. 'Cupcake Sister' opens things up and is a nihilistic buzzsaw torture machine of wailing precision and piercing punishment. There is a dark, meticulous undercurrent here that keeps the songs on a magnetic, kinetic pulse, which somehow heightens Morgan Fox's shouts and larynx-shredding screams into a white-eyed fever of such pertinence that the adrenalin spikes through your ears - instant headache/headrush. The violence to tension ratio sits precariously at 1:1, so brutal and anxiety-ridden The Unlawful Trade... is - and yet there is a frenetic energy that makes this exciting, relevant...dare I say even important? Grab the album here!

Naomi Is A Television Punk

Naomi Punk is the other band getting me through this miserable night (that and some baked chicken, tomato, olives, lemon, garlic and thyme on rice - because I like to cook and the kitchen is super warm - and gallons of Lemsip). They brought out 2nd album Television Man through Captured Tracks last year, and it is the type of dirty garage punk with a glossed, glazed edge that I absolutely love. There is a grunge growl here that reminds me of a band like True Widow - albeit with the more angular brood that those Copenhagen kids brandish with such wanton disdain. If you missed this record last year - and I have to admit that aside from hearing 'Firehose Face' over a venue PA in December, I did - then you need to hunt this down. It's bloody great.

Never Mourn The Silver For The Gold

I haven't heard much of Spanish four-piece Mourn - but that is definitely about to change. Captured Tracks are putting out their debut record. These teens (none have hit that mythical age of 18) bristle with dark, spiked energy - the Polly Jean croon on 'Silver Gold' is electric and seductive; the pause and the blast in just a little early throwing you off guard; the siren howl of "Deliver me from heaven" juxtaposed by the banshee yelps - it's incredibly well orchestrated. These guys are white hot here - there isn't any posing or teetering lack of surety. The free track when you pre-order Mourn is called 'Boys Are Cunts'. I cannot wait to hear this record!

A Fortnight Of Silence...Then Axxa/Abraxas

The Roku Music roadshow has started – the album Collider is out, Sonic Masala Records is officially out of the gates, and the band have played their first brace of regional shows. It has been a whirlwind fortnight to be sure – but poor ol blog has been neglected in the meantime! My head is foggy thanks to a number of beers consumed in the Time Machine (one of Queensland’s best stores, hands down – get out to Nambour and check it out!) and some amazing Roku Music and Dreamtime-inspired noise, so I need a nice, smooth introduction to the week…and Atlanta’s Axxa/Abraxas is providing me with just that.

Out on Captured Tracks last week, this self-titled debut from Axxa/Abraxas (real name Ben Asbury) plays like Kurt Vile if he fronted Real Estate in the 60s and sang a good few octaves higher. There is a base element here, the paring back of all but the bare elements that makes up the DNA of psych pop – and whilst the flourishes like a guitar solo (which always shadows the background) exist, they aren’t given weight. There is a breathy weightlessness to these tracks that give Axxa/Abraxas a vintage quality, like stumbling over some dust-covered 8 track in the basement of the resident recluse, giving a sneak peak into what their life might have been like. ‘Painted Blue’ allows for a more open-ended psych flourish, but in the main the album remains at a sedate pace, an ebullient meander through sepia shadows. It almost makes working on a Monday bearable…

Axxa/Abraxas is out now.

Poetic Bridge Over Juan Wauters

I moved headquarters last week, hence the week of silence here at Sonic Masala HQ. There has been a lot going on behind the scenes though, most of which concerns the label – writing promos, contacting blogs such as myself, talking to radio representatives, chasing vinyl jackets, organising gigs and tours, and finishing up with the vinyl entering the country (yes, the Roku Music LP and the Gazar Strips EP have made it safe and sound!). All of this around the hours of my day job. Busy indeed. But there is no relenting from the music – it stops for no man.

One thing I’ve noticed this week though is that there has been a fairly lukewarm response to The Beets’ frontman Juan Wauters’ debut solo album, North American Poetry (N.A.P.). A lot of the humdrum responses have come from the belief that it is too close to home, as it were. The Beets are renowned for slacker garage throwaway tracks, delivered in that disaffected, half asleep way that intimates that they don’t give a fuck when they so clearly do. I love it when a band pulls that off too, and I'm a fan of Spit In The Face Of People Who Don't Want To Be Cool, Let The Poison Out and Stay Home albums. But just because Wauters is casting off the rest of the band and stripping the fuzz off like a scuba suit, its still the same dude underneath, just a lot more naked. I'm not saying this isn’t a flawed record – some tracks drift away, appearing to be more of a bridge than a song in their own right – but there are songs that stand up to the test of time, like the jangly single 'Sanity Or Not', or the tracks where Carmelle Safdi comes into the mix, or the Spanish sung 'Escucho Mucho'. Damn, that may as well be half the album right there! At the end of the day, Wauters has poetic eclecticism, hooks a-plenty, and this album remains incredibly moreish. For whatever reason, the lack of variety of here was exactly what I expected, and as it turned out, exactly what I wanted. Plus I listened to this album pretty much nonstop as I packed the old place and moved to the new - so it's become a part of me now.

N.A.P. is out now through Captured Tracks - get it here.

Widowspeak Head Back To The Swamps

The great new EP from Brooklyn's psych folk wanderers Widowspeak is really working me over tonight. The Swamps is six tracks of coalescing, haunting beauty. It isn't often that an EP offers a complete listening experience, offering instead bite-sized portions of ideas, kernels of genius, nuggets of experimentation - so fun, yet not always fulfilling. The Swamps is something else - a perfectly calibrated and distilled adventure into the Gothic unknown, a rustic ghost story filled with vintage gloss and eeriness. There are moments of lilting strength and positivity, like on the country smoker 'Brass Bed', but the undulating majesty that permeates The Swamps is never out of sight (and with 'Smoke & Mirrors', the prog kosmiche elements heighten the song and the album into another territory altogether...)

Captured Tracks are putting The Swamps EP out tomorrow - you can buy it in pastel yellow vinyl here.

Projecting Outwards, Forever

A hologram is a creation of something that is not - a projection of something three-dimensional, allowing things to exist in spaces where they cannot conceivably be. Essentially a technological sleight of hand, designed to elude, to confuse, to solicit, to entrance - to trick. Yet holograms are flawed, even as a figment of the imagination - bound within the limits of projection, forever one-dimensional.

Sweden's Holograms, and indeed the bubbling nihilism inherent in the Stockholm underground scene (if such a thing can be deemed to exist), have a lot to live up to. Can the fires continue to burn, the reservoir of inertia begetting anger like napalm, or will it prove to be a facade, a one-faceted ruse to disguise a thinly-veiled play for style rather than substance? Although You're Nothing, Denmark brethren Iceage's follow-up to explosive debut New Brigade, was an exciting slice of ephemeral gnashing of teeth, its slickness and lessening of jackboot aggression found some detractors. Forever is likely to do the same for Holograms - they may have found themselves on the hip Captured Tracks label, but its popularity could still bread discontent from those that bought wholesale into the surface annihilation.

But as Forever, and indeed Holograms attests, things are far more complex. Forever teeters on the knife edge between exultation and extermination - the wellspring of a volatile relationship with its depths deemed plumbed. And despite the four-piece mirroring the malaise and boredom that comes from feeling isolated in a cold, urban landscape, there are moments of exuberance that (shock, horror) sound almost joyous (see: the chugging rush of, well, 'Rush'; the loose limbed energy inherent on 'A Blaze on the Hillside'). The production sounds cavernous, yet deceptive - it could be coming from a dungeon, a pit, a warehouse, a coliseum. The aggression is still unbridled for the most part, but here it is harnessed with finesse. If anything, Forever has the most apt cover art of 2013 - the William Bouguereau painting at once visceral and balletic, violent yet sleek and seductive in presence and form. Holograms aren't projecting themselves onto a blank canvas, or a paper-thin expanse - this is emphatic, enmeshing, and encapsulating the times.

You can buy Forever tomorrow from here - and you really should. It's bloody awesome.

Captured And Taking Their Medicine

Two Captured Tracks releases in one day - what will the neighbours think???

Medicine are a band that I only knew in my teenage years because they were on the Brandon Lee vehicle The Crow. I loved that movie - and the soundtrack. Still do (for better or worse). And like Eric Draven, the LA trio have risen from the dead, producing To The Happy Few, their first album in almost two decades. TWO DECADES! It blows my mind. But then again, shoegaze squalls are fashionable again (and for many never went out of fashion). The thing about To The Happy Few (an understatement if I've ever heard one) is that it is huge - Beth Thompson's vocals are still gossamer light, floating in and out of the mix, an ethereal Siren. But just like the mythical creatures of yore, her lilting lyrics draws you on the jagged, unforgiving rocks - and you lose yourself willingly. 'It's Not Enough' is a driving sunbeam that burns the retina, yet leaves a smile permanently etched on the lips; 'Burn It' is a sinuous serpent, sleek and obtuse, deliberately toying; 'Holy Crimes' and 'The End Of The Line' are deliberately warped, bent out of shape and distorted, a SoCal psych-pop double act from the future, played by resurrected counterculture kings with barely any control over their instruments. It's much more inventive than a band apart for eighteen years has any right to be - and a testament to Captured Tracks to shine a light on these truly underrated musicians once more.

You can buy the album here.

Running Out Of Alex

When Ruban Nielson left behind his New Zealand home and disbanded The Mint Chicks, endeavouring to embark on a psychogenic pop adventure in the form of Unknown Mortal Orchestra, I was incredibly excited – and understandably so, as his two albums have proven to be warbled pop delights, revelling in the left of field whilst imbued with a strong knack for hook, melody and longevity. I didn’t think it could be replicated, and I don’t believe that Edmonton's Alex Calder’s debut EP Time (out now on Captured Tracks) is endeavouring to do that. Yet opening track ‘Suki & Me’ is a damn fine reiteration of the same musical tropes, and rather than scratch the noodle in bemusement over apparent artist pilfering, I’ve been mesmerised. The rest of the album veers into the jangly beach pop fare that the Dustin Payeurs and Jack Tatums of the past few years have propagated, and some of these tracks toe the line a little too closely to truly stand out. But Calder is a definite presence – songs like 'Fatal Delay' and the title track straddle the line between psych pop meandering and sunny malaise...meandering... It's the kind of album that soundtracks a morning of sunshine and haze after a particularly big night out, scattered order, addled yet laconic. It's certainly an intriguing hit-out

You can purchase Time here - listen to the EP below.

Soft Metals Heat Up The Lenses

Extending my synthetic sounds is Lenses, the second LP from LA band Soft Metals. I'm struggling to fathom what synapse have finally switched on to this, but I'm sinking into this duo's propensity for meticulously produced beats that manipulate your soul, a mind-bending surrealist trip through red-tinged hallways, velvet-walled back-rooms and illicit dreams. The insatiability of lust-fuelled desires spark the flames here - I feel embarrassed to listen to this in public. Patricia Hall's breathless vocals echoes of drugged, wanton abandonment of inhibitions. Ian Hicks's plaintive, prog synth production bleeds out from one track to the next, but that also helps give these tracks their potency - an iron lung of forbidden thoughts, feelings, tastes. Don't be surprised if they sell this in nondescript paper bags - this is volatile, virile, and violent in its overt coquetteishness. Impressive.

Lenses is out on Captured Tracks now - grab it here.

Soft Metals - Tell Me
Soft Metals - On A Cloud

VIDEO VACUUM - Mark Of Cain, Thee Hugs, Bad Dreems, Ghost Wave

Everyone loves a good comeback story. If you are into your sport (and I'm sure most of you aren't), there have been some good ones (and in the case of the Ashes Test, an incredibly almost-ran...). Two weeks ago in the national AFL competition, the struggling Brisbane Lions faced the might of the Geelong Cats, and at one stage were down in excess of 50 points. Yet somehow in the final exchange they opened the floodgates to the point where they had the opportunity to steal victory after the siren. The task fell to Ash McGrath, who was playing his milestone 200th game. And he slotted it - miracle victory. And in some ways that's how I see today's Video Vacuum. One of the favourite segments of Sonic Masala, it's been away for a while, but here comes out of nowhere to nail it again, providing us all with respite from our dull and inane lives with a few minutes of AV ecstasy. (Can you smell the tenuousness???)

The Mark of Cain thundered back into our lives (and to be fair, the brutality and excellence of Ill At Ease shaped my teenhood so they never really left) last year with new record Songs Of The Third & Fifth. 'Milosevic' is one of the best cuts on there, and here it is as their new single. The video is pretty straight up and down, albeit with a sizable slick production, yet that has always been the way for this trio - no flamboyance, pretention or accoutrements - it's all about the slay.

 

One of the many diseased garage bands floating in the underbelly of Brisbane, Thee Hugs don't play as often as we'd all like. Then again, there is only so much corruption one can take before it becomes too much. The trio realise this, so they are going for a full frontal assault in the form of 12" LP Drug Use & Alcohol Abuse. 'Somebody Pooed In The Pool' is the perfect precursor - puerile, insidious, feverish - a downward spiral into the wormhole of no return. And its pretty fun too (Yuri Johnson's video is great - check out his other stuff, its all champagne). Long Gone Records, you've done it again.

 

Bad Dreems are embarking on a lengthy Australian tour. The four-piece's penchant for off-kilter slacker segues has slipped even further into uncharted, surreal territory on incumbent EP Badlands, playing like a laidback saunter through Dali's nightmares. If Batpiss and The Spinning Rooms are all abrasive counterpoints to Kenneth Cook's Wake In Fright nightmare, then Badlands is more the morning after, the sun filtering through the blinds, dust motes floating in the air, and you are struggling to work out where you are, why you are drenched with sweat with another person's blood on your hands, and yet are vaguely happy. C'est la vie from the Snowtown moors. Get this tapeworm of a track in your earhole, and guaranteed it will suck the life out of your insides all day, something you will be eternally grateful for even as your molars drop into your coffee and you lose the sight in one eye. Bad Dreems are becoming a reality. (The band are playing in Brisbane Thursday night as part of the Hand Games Zine launch - alongside SM alums Black Vacation and Peter Bibby, it's all happening at The End for free).

 

Finally we have Ghost Wave from across the Tasman, who have just launched their Ages LP on Arch Hill Records. It will also be released globally under the Flying Nun banner - a name that still rings soundly across the world (and through connecting with the excellent Captured Tracks in the US and Secretly Canadian in Canada, Ages will get a strong push). 'Here She Comes' is pretty emblematic of the rest of the record - awash with distortion, a shoegaze template tempered with a Morning After Girls-like penchant for psychedelic flourishes, its toes pushed firmly into the sand, sun-kissed minds and sugar-rush melodies. Their trick is to overload you with sweetness whilst undercut with blasts of aggression - a two-faced razorblade candy trip. Be blase with Ghost Wave at your peril.

 

NOW GET BACK TO WORK!

Holographic Meditations

Another month, another heady, acrid taste of the upcoming Holograms record, Forever. 'Meditations' is as feverish, fervent and brooding as you can expect, the perfect follow-up to 'Flesh & Bone' and keeps the anticipation for the LP's arrival in September at an all time high.

 Forever is coming out through Captured Tracks.

Lowered Holograms = Higher Expectations

Lower

I'm spending my day writing for other publications - and bizarrely it's all on the heavier side - reviews for local punks Fat and resident scuzzbuckets The Melvins, as well as an interview with OM/Sleep's Al Cisneros (and another with OM/Grails drummer Emil Amos in the works). Yet the music I'm looking forward to listening to all afternoon is of a more Scandinavian bent, as two of the greater exports from Copenhagen gear up for new releases.

Holograms

I've spoken of both Holograms and Lower of recent times (have a read about and listen to their "older" stuff here and here respectively). Combined with the likes of Iceage and Sexdrome, the underground (well, not so underground anymore) music scene there is teeming with parasitic, grimy post-punk nihilism that rattles the teeth and widens the eyes, shortens the breath and quickens the heart. It's exciting times, heightened further with the imminent releases of Lower's debut as-yet-untitled LP through Escho, and Forever, Hologram's longplayer effort (out through Captured Tracks in September). And if this isn't enough, they have both dropped teaser tracks. And lo and behold, they are fucking stellar, particularly Lower's brutal sledgehammer that is 'Another Life'.

Honesty Clashes On The Beach

Just a quick post bout Clash The Truth, the new album from Dustin Payseur and his Beach Fossils. I remember when his self-titled record came on the scene at the beginnings of a time when lo-fi post-punk pop was king, especially from Brooklyn. Since then we have had Wild Nothing, Hanoi Janes, DIIV, Surfer Blood, Real Estate, Ducktails, Craft Spells - the list goes on and on. So at the beginnings of 2013 Beach Fossils return with their second LP (on Captured Tracks once more), Payseur now with a band in tow, and it would be easy to surmise that the lustre would have worn off, that the rich vein that has been mined so far over the past few years would have dried up. But for the most part, Clash The Truth is an incredibly strong, affecting, addictive listen. The immediacy of having a band frees Payseur to open up the shoulders and really throw himself into these tunes, so songs like the title track and 'Careless' are fast and furious, warm and urgent. There is Balearic fare too - the instrumental 'Modern Holiday', the forlorn 'Sleep Apnea'. At times it feels these track rollick along too fast, where there was still room to grow and breathe. But when a chiming cruiser like 'Shallow' flies in at you, you can't help but be swept away by the juxtaposition of Payseur's laconic vocals and the intense instrumentation. Clash The Truth is a great follow up album, and cements Beach Fossils as much more than a passing fad.

You can - and should - grab Clash The Truth here.

Beach Fossils - Clash The Truth
Beach Fossils - Shallow

Frozen Holograms Are Chasing My Mind

Scandinavia continues to produce some of the best angular, abrasive rock at the moment. What is going on over there? Whatever it is, for better or worse, keep it coming. The latest thing I'm spinning is from a Swedish band called Holograms. They put out a sweet 7" through Captured Tracks (which you can still get here), and preceding their debut LP in July (also through CT) is this track. It's the seething that underpins the chirping electronics and punky chanting vocals that really provokes a desire to smash the nearest glass implement over your own head for shits and giggles. Anything that imparts that into today's youth is A-OK with me.

Holograms - Chasing My Mind
Holograms - ABC City

Friday Cover Up - Diving For Fossils With My Baby

A couple weeks ago my girlfriend asked (somewhat flippantly) why I don't talk about her on Sonic Masala. Well, apart from ruining my clear chances with Katy Goodman and Mia Clarke, the real reason is because it's all about the music. No one wants to hear about how we were listening to the latest Cannon record whilst driving to buy groceries, or how she is a minor fan of local grungers Sleepwalks, or how bizarre she found Amateur Childbirth, do they? Maybe I am being unfair. Maybe people would much prefer that to the crap I dole out willy nilly. But as strange as this may sound, much of our relationship hovers outside the realms of music. That is MY domain...MINE!

Ahem...

But then I heard this cover great retro guitar pop icon Beach Fossils did of the great shoegaze band Slowdive's 'Alison'. Beach Fossils bypass the shimmering guitar pop to embrace some shimmering noise whilst gazing at their shoelaces. Not only is Souvlaki one of the great shoegaze albums EVER, but the track is amazing and is emblazoned with my girlfriend's name. The song is part of AdHoc, a new "quarterly zine" that offers you a download of 50 previously unreleased tracks from supportive artists, if you're willing to donate $15 or more. Anyway, it's a great song. More importantly, though - you have been mentioned, Alison.




But I don't want to leave a Beach Fossils-affiliated post with out talking about the 7" they released through Captured Tracks a couple weeks ago. "Shallow" is the A-side, backed by another new one, "Lessons.

Beach Fossils - Shallow
Beach Fossils - Lessons

Jesse Analyses Ruined Dreams

Captured Tracks finished the year strongly with releases from Blouse, Widowspeak and Dive making indelible impressions, yet 2012 doesn't appear to show any slowing down of quality. Last week we had the first offering from Wild Nothing, and next week another one will be let out into the wild. Dream Analysis is the new EP from Jesse Ruins, a Tokyo-based collective that are marrying the droning doom-pop that stablemate Silk Flowers specialises in, yet veers into a more meditative realm that seeps into the emotional side of aural pleasure. The hazy electronica on display is exciting. Apparently this EP is being used as an introduction to Jesse Ruins. If so, the connection is instantaneous and electric on first touch. I hope we go all the way...

Dream Analysis is to be released 21st February.

Nothing Wild Leads You Nowhere

Jack Tatum rode a tsunami wave of adulation on the back of his Gemini album of 2010 under the moniker Wild Nothing, and his underground king status is bound to escalate into something otherworldly with the release of his sophomore album later this year. In the meantime, Captured Tracks are releasing Wild Nothing's new 7", Nowhere, on Feb 21st. Check out the single below, which features vocals also from Andrea Estella of Twin Sister. There is something distinctly 80s sounding in the alt-rock college radio sense, yet with a more polished sound due to this being the first time that Wild Nothing has ventured into a real live studio. I personally think it sounds amazing, possibly the best track he has laid down to date - the production really suits him. Nothing feels fabricated here - this could be the sound of Real Estate if they weren't so fucking boring.


Pre-order the album here, where you might be lucky to get 1 of 500 limited white vinyl editions of the 7".

Wild Nothing - Nowhere

Beeting On The True Widow

Both of these tracks came up a while ago on the blog merry-go-round - in fact I have so many posts backlogged from past releases they are starting to grow mould - but I couldn't let them slide by, nor could I decide which one to write about to close out this balmy Thursday, so I'm hitting you with both barrels!


First up, it's well known now that I have begun a love affair with Captured Tracks favoured Queens trio The Beets. I love their silly cartoon cover art, their blase attitude, their slacker malaise wrapped up in Black Lips Halloween garb. They released an album at the beginning of the year - Staying Home - which I thought was a lot of fun. Now they are releasing another album called Let The Poison Out (this time finding its home on Hardly Art, still with the cover art though!). I have already gushed over first track from it 'Doing As I Do', but here is another. I'm yet to get my mitts on the LP, although when searching for it down at my local record store (which, after a huge closing down sale and the requisite mass protest, fevered vinyl purchases and gnashing of teeth, is still inexplicably open) I found their first album, Spit In The Face Of People Who Don't Want To Be Cool, so it still kinda worked out for me.

The Beets - Friends Of Friends
The Beets - Doing As I Do


I am a massive fan of True Widow, and their debut album slays me. So when I heard that they already had some new releases coming our way, I was more than stoked. I.N.O is in fact a mixed bag of both leftovers from their impossibly long monikered LP As High As The Highest Heavens And From The Center To The Circumference Of The Earth and brand newies, such as the track 'Bathyscaphe' below. Apart from the title that is at the other end of the length spectrum, it is droning beauty as usual from these Texans. Which means it's crazy good.

True Widow - Bathyscaphe
True Widow - Skull Eyes

NOW do you see why I've included both? Good! Now I'm off to the airport. I will be predisposed for the next few days - not seeing your girlfriend for ten months means there is some catching up to do - but I'm not leaving you hanging! Expect posts about Luke Roberts, Blasted Canyons, a Friday Cover Up, our next Hits From The Box and more!

Spectral Pennies Aren't So Bad - More So-So

Spectrals (known as Louis Oliver Jones to his mum) has really tickled the fancy of the blogging world over the past couple years, and with good reason. His rise coincides with a plethora of bedroom dreamers (which number Wild Nothing, Beach Fossils, Cloud Nothings and Hanoi Janes in their midst) whose windswept, reverb-laden wistful pop reinvigorated the idea of what it takes to be a pop artist. The UK act has put out acclaimed releases on the likes of Moshi Moshi and Sex Is Disgusting, but we now have the LP Bad Penny (with Wichita Records fighting off Captured Tracks for the rights to put it out) to play with.

Now, before discussing the album, let me state my opinions here. Like most bedroom projects, the quality of output varies wildly, regardless of what the pop culture intelligentsia like to tell us. The above mentioned bands I enjoy (especially Cloud Nothings and Hanoi Janes), but as with most of the genre trends of the past few years, with the fires fanned by the "cool" generators (no names need to be mentioned), we get a glut of "next big things" that are either too green, unfairly pigeonholed or are just plain shit. It takes the gloss off the achievements of the people who are succeeding at their chosen craft (one case in point - Toro Y Moi and Washed Out's concerted efforts to step away from the tsunami of similar-sounding artists of a sound they invariably created). So, whilst I've liked some of Spectrals' retro 50s/60s pop meanderings, I approached his highly anticipated album with wariness.

Bad Penny is a great name for the album for two reasons. Firstly, it knowingly tips the hat at the style of music he utilises for inspiration - that which is almost half a century old, somewhat innocent and therefore almost rudimentary in its composition. The fact that Jones has that Yorkshire tint (his vocals are incredibly similar to Arctic monkey Alex Turner) also shadows the second reason Bad Penny fits - the idea of the contradiction. And there are many.

Firstly, like Turner, Spectrals specialises in creating addictive, upbeat music to background what are ultimately mawkish, sometimes bitter ruminations on young adulthood, love and life. But truth be told, whilst Spectrals as a live unit (and admittedly on most of the earlier releases) has been entrancing and personable, here the songs verge on the featherlight, almost begging to be liked and in the process becoming a wallflower in the genre as opposed to king of the prom. The English tones over the American sound notwithstanding, the juxtapositions are in the main disappointing. There are good tracks here - 'Big Baby' and 'Luck Is There To Be Pushed' in particular - but in the end Bad Penny, for me, was more of a misspent chance.

But hey, he's 21, and he already has some writing nous - he'll bounce back.

Bad Penny is out now - grab it here.

Spectrals - Baby Love