Back in January, I was pretty impressed by the debut single from the B Of the Bang, ‘Alfred, Light the Fires.’ I was inspired to write “Imagine Broken Records invading the soul of Neil Hannon out of the Divine Comedy and driving the Duke Special out… rather special.”
Well, the band have more than delivered on the promise of that single. It’s astonishing to believe that this is only their debut album (and I’ve just checked the press release to confirm that), because like the forthcoming Broken Records album, this is an astonishingly accomplished record. Debut or not, it is a pretty staggering record that becomes addictive astonishingly quickly.
So many bands claim, almost always wrongly, that ‘Our music is pretty hard to categorise’ on the grounds that it’s preferable to saying “We sound like a third-rate Coldplay.” The B Of the Bang are actually impressively hard to pigeonhole – yet even more impressively, it works together very well. Gorgeous moments that might be folk (or should that be anti-folk?), eastern European influences here and there and epic moments MINUS the bombast.
Look, I’m going to lay my cards on the table here. This is one of the best albums you will hear this year. Please go and buy it when it’s released. If you buy it and don’t agree…well, let’s just say subjective opinions can sometimes be overrated.
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