Eternal Return, United Fruit’s second album opens with ‘Ghost Inside Your Head’; an unrestrained, loud and slightly fuzzy track that burrows into your head. They’ve started strong and now they have a lot to live up to. The jagged-edged vocals are delivered with such fervour and an urgency that it grabs your attention – and more importantly – keeps it.
The intro to ‘Open Your Eyes’ is dappled with small but sunny chimes amongst the grate of the guitars. The vocals are a little more shouted than sung which gives them weight and punch. The bright melody that’s somewhat lighter than those ardent vocals somehow also manage to carry everything from beginning to end – it’s quite a feat and just how United Fruit have crafted such a sound is, quite frankly, as baffling as it is impressive. Recent single ‘Where The Sun Beats Down’ is reminiscent of late-90’s indie band Gin Blossoms, who were good at making music fun, vast and melodic. It’s a quality that resonates throughout the entire album; it doesn’t sound at all dated or out of place, though. United Fruit have taken that sound – or something very much like it – and turned it into something new and fresh.
‘Golden Days’ doesn’t even have an intro, beginning with a sharp intake of a breath and then blasting straight into their now somewhat typical massive sound of mashed together guitars – creating an unrelenting haze from beginning to end – and bold, loud, unwavering vocals, this time closing on a gut-vibrating noise that somehow also pinches the brain, but only a little.
With a title like ‘Sorrow’ you might be forgiven for expecting something different, but no. United Fruit’s raison d’être – and indeed much of their charm – is that loud, bold, melodic, and hazy noise we’ve come to know and love about the album. ‘Sorrow’ is nothing at all like its namesake, instead, it’s almost the total opposite; packed to the maximum level with a mash of guitars, vocals that once again are more shouted than they are sung, sounding more like a battle cry.
There are no apparent or obvious curveballs on Eternal Return. Some bands – for good reason – throw in something completely other and apart from their usual antics on every album, perhaps to show they’re not a one-trick pony; that they actually can do something else, look here’s the proof. But United Fruit don’t seem to be a one-trick pony at all. Instead, they appear to have opted for the “This Is Us Right Now, Like It Or Lump It” frame of mind. Whatever the reasons, United Fruit have created an album with so much clout that it could, left to its own devices, possibly melt your face off, or at the very least leave you with some colourful bruises – you know, they kind you proudly show off to your mates like a badge of honour as proof that you did it and you managed to get out of there alive.
Eternal Return is released today (13th May) and is available to buy from iTunes now.
