Singles

I Like Trains - Sea of Regrets

Chris Tapley 05/10/2009

Rating: 4/5

Following on from last years instrumental The Christmas Tree Ship EP. I Like Trains return with more of their trademark macabre post rock with vocals, a genre which they have pretty much made their own now. This first single from the forthcoming new album (due early next year) is arguably more melodic than previous outings, substituting their usual overriding morbidity with something a little more uplifting and tuneful.

There's a subdued opening, with a simple picked guitar line. The track gradually picks up momentum though, with the slowly swelling orchestration and twitching chug of low end guitars lending an air of growing drama as David Martin sings "we're out of our depth here", before the song is finally drowned in a euphoric wash of noise. There's no sense of this being some blatantly engineered climax though, as can so often be the case with post rock; Sea of Regrets reaches it's conclusion so organically that it's impossible to see any other way this track could have played out.

It's packed with melancholy and sombre lyrics such as "One by one, It happens to us all, when you least expect, your sky will tumble down", Martin's soothing worldly tone manages to makes this a strangely uplifting experience though. And here in lies the brilliance of I Like Trains, they're capable of wallowing in the darkness just long enough for it to grow in to something else, something which is more often than not completely spellbinding and startlingly majestic.

Release date: 12/10/09