From the moment Take Care, the opener on Blaenavon’s debut album, ‘That’s Your Lot’, edges into range, it’s clear that they mean business. The sound is crisp, immediate and contemporary, and the songs feel highly literate, cerebral even. It’s unlikely that they will kickstart a third golden age of indie - the horse may have bolted on that - but they will surely awaken potentially dormant sensibilities in fans of the Vaccines, the Kooks and, somewhat inevitably, the Smiths.
This is an LP stacked with of interesting elements, from the ‘80s tubular bass effect on Take Care (which also shows up on I Will Be The World), to a strangely playful, Morrissey-esque lyric on Let’s Pray: “Let’s pray for death!” The latter tune channels wistful indie-pop that in other hands (think the 1975) might veer towards irritating. Here, though, Blaenavon's Ben Gregory displays a precocious amount of vocal emotional intelligence. He’s often serious but rarely sentimental or overbearing.
There’s some really nimble musicality here, too. The rhythm sections on Prague ‘99 and Lonely Side are extremely satisfying, while the piano-led Let Me See What Happens Next is both a lovely breakwater for the waves of guitar rock, and a fine exercise in rhythmic lyric writing.
Its title implies exactly the weighted push and pull that gives the song its seductive backbone. Lovely stuff.
The best song here, though, is Alice Come Home, an indie epic that makes masterful use of switches in tempo and dynamics while retaining a highly appealing emotional discipline. Once again, the sound is familiar - somewhere between Jeff Buckley and Razorlight - but there's a kind of English folksyness that actually recalls Martin Carthy. Now there is an influence you don’t hear very often.
Certain songs underwhelm, though. Orthodox Man is pretty anonymous but for a chorus saved by the vocal melody line being doubled by watery guitar. Elsewhere, My Bark is Your Bite is a bit plodding and pedestrian while album closer That’s Your Lot is surprisingly inconsequential considering what has gone before.
But, ultimately, ‘That’s Your Lot’ is a tremendously exciting debut. With three songs clocking in at over six minutes, it’s also a very confident one. It may not inspire the explosive excitement of first albums by the Vaccines or the Libertines, but that could be a good thing in the long run.
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