Demos

The Rivers of Sound - Lost Property

Owain Paciuszko 19/11/2010

Rating: 3/5

Lilting indie-pop from Rivers of Sound, the jaunty guitar-driven title track kicks off this EP with a bouncy musical background to Lewis Brown's soft-edged vocal; he has a similar sound to Manic Street Preachers' James Dean Bradfield. It's a half decent pop tune, kind of like an angsty Snow Patrol, but without anything beyond all round competency to recommend it.

Paul Matthews' guitar on The Show sounds like There's No Other Way-era Graham Coxon, and again the band manage to deliver pleasing enough indie-pop goodies all wrapped up in decent production and pass-mark musicianship but not enough personality it coming through on record to really allow their songs to connect much further than that. Final track Carpe Diem has a gloomier, brooding edge that brings the band's sound closer in line to the aforementioned Manics with a twist of Nirvana, but the same problems rear their head in that this band knows their way around their respective instruments (and vocal chords) but they seem currently like four men not really sure of themselves creatively and perhaps with time they'll find a way of developing this sound into something that brings more of its own voice than echoes of others.