Alarm Bells’ new EP Part Two starts in true DIY fashion – a distant intro bursts into life with a miasma of echoing guitar work and disarming vocals, shades of early Red Hot Chili Peppers and Hot Hot Heat, it’s an amiable listen.
On to ‘Must Be Something That I Took’, which brings to mind Los Campesinos before taking a turn in minute two of seven to a more Fatalists-esque place, eventually settling at a typically indie staccato-vocals-and-guitar-trading-abrasive-places roadstop.
The promo lit suggests ‘Fugazi-esque sections’ but this is a bit of a stretch, like describing this review as having “Baraka-like sections.” The vocals are still listenable, although it’s hard to discern much from the lyrics: not always a bad thing but this is a lot of song with not much story. Normally not having a story means having some killer riffs, and these aren’t here either.
It’s not a bad mix, but it isn’t revolutionary – not that it has to be, but we’re not listening to something ground-breaking here. As the EP progresses through ‘Compounds’ and ‘Come’ it’s more and more engrossing. Great to see live you can imagine, the songs lend themselves to the anarchic live set rather than the settled listening of an EP, but this is enjoyable, questions of originality or inventiveness notwithstanding. Go see them live: they’ve the better part of a half hour’s worth of nicely constructed music to put to a 4-song EP, they’d be well worth seeing in-person.