(Lakota)
Herald rating: * * * *
Review: Russell Baillie
The debut album of this particularly young Dublin guitar trio might suggest they've grown up fast on a lot of other bands - four tracks in we've ticked off Manic Street Preachers, Placebo, Radiohead and the Smashing Pumpkins.
But underneath the mix of the caterwauling falsetto vocals of guitarist Mark Greaney, and a sound that swings from the thunderously wide-screen to the acoustically intimate, are a riveting run of decent tunes to go with that industrial-strength anguish.
All this and a bit of a Joy Division fixation too, most apparent on the stark pulse and glass-shard guitars of Long Way South.
Add the glam-gone-goth swagger of October Swimmer (better add Suede to that list), the string-laden and majestically chorused Undercover Angel and a few stark and severe ballads and the result is a riveting debut by a band giving angst-rock a good name.
<i>JJ72:</i> JJ72
AdvertisementAdvertise with NZME.