Demos

Battle For Prague - We Could Be Anywhere

Owain Paciuszko 26/11/2009

Rating: 4/5

Melodic indie-pop goodness from part-London/part-Birmingham based fourtet. Opener Hundred Feet Below is a pacy, uplifting number that successfully manages to raise neck hairs, whilst pulling on emotional tendons with Greg Milner's cracked vocals, like a timid Caleb Followill.

I See A Ghost is a slow-build song that earns them inevitable comparisons to the likes of Arcade Fire, it shares a strident marching percussion and defiantly wailed calls of 'This old house.' When it erupts it does so gloriously, guitars rage over a doppler of strings; it's a successfully spine-tingling track that manages to capture the optimistic, defiant energy of Win Butler et al.

Whilst The Wetlands feels a bit damp afterwards, it's nevertheless a charged and confident tune, but has neither the instrumental hooks or lyrical refrains that grab the attention as much as the preceding. Closing track Car/Plane/Boat recalls the good ol' days of early Bloc Party matching a frantic pace to pondering vocals, lyrically and musically it takes a fun journey as Gilner intones 'I haven't slept for weeks as the car's still following me.', you can practically see the three in the morning street lights blurring past. It all ends abruptly, but this is a particularly impressive and exciting EP from a band who should (in a just world) be talk of the town in 2010.