Speedy Wunderground, record label/verb. to rise with acclaim, while wearing expensive-looking baggy clothes and having a shaky voice.
Label manager Dan Carey (previous producer for Franz Ferdinand, black midi, Fontaines D.C. and TOY) has a definite ‘type’. This is an impassioned debut album with riveting moments that nonetheless needs a weightier voice. To make more layered use of the band’s innate paranoia, the unsettled vocals and excitable rhythms call for conceptual revisions; despite sounding laboured over, polished, ruthlessly honed, this doesn’t feel like the final draft because of their mercurial tendencies. However, owing to its fragility, ‘Tired of Liberty’ is also often exuberant and dramatic.
A favourite: ‘North is Your Heart’
21/30
‘Tired of Liberty’ is out now via Speedy Wunderground.