A couple of times a year, I go into Ignite Records in Birmingham’s famous, sprawling Oasis shop (a kind of huge indoor market), and get the fine gentleman who runs the shop, Rich, to recommend me a couple of albums. It is good fun, just taking a leap into the unknown, and I very much trust his judgement.
One such impulsive buy was Wildhoney‘s debut album Sleep Through It, which was released earlier this year. I am a sucker for anything shoegazey and that album certainly fitted into that category – think Lush in their Spooky period, when Robin Guthrie was bringing his unique brand of production magic to their sound.
So, I was quite surprised to hear that Wildhoney’s new six-track EP Your Face Sideways has gone in a much more C-86 direction, and opener ‘Ceiling Fan’ could almost be The Shop Assistants, albeit ironically with a more lush production. Quite honestly, I was hooked before Lauren Shusterich’s wonderful vocals came in after all of 13 seconds.
‘Laura’, is another very strong one which does hark back a bit more to the debut album, while ‘Slow Motion’ brings to mind the terminally under-appreciated HeartThrobs and is a good example of Wildhoney’s knack of keeping their songs punchy and short. Unfortunately, the absolute opposite applies with closing track ‘FSA II’. Lovely as the intro is, it does not need to be nine and a half minutes long, with the track stretching to over twelve minutes in all.
In between times, ‘Hurts To Hear’ is another upbeat treat and ‘Thin Air’ moves the band from C-86 to that time around 1990-1992, when everyone had THAT funky drumbeat in their songs.
All in all, this is a really strong and immediately likeable EP from this highly promising Baltimore band.
[Rating:4]
(Released 16.10.15)
