by Bianca Rhodes
3/5
Edinburgh indie-rock group return with their fourth studio album in ten years, a record that solidifies their artistic personality showcasing a newfound maturity of sound and lyric.
Moving on from the energetic, angry times of their third album, in ‘The More I Sleep the Less I Dream’, the band builds up consistently from their previous endeavours, showing themselves to be confident and strong of their sound. Yet they do not content themselves and sit comfortably on what they already know and have explored – rather, they delve into dramatic bursts of grandiose rock that feels refined and well crafted.
The album is imbued with a strong sense of self, of glorious homecoming. Tension-filled opener ‘Impossible’ effectively ushers the listener in, starting from an elegant, argentine guitar riff, then building up a steady crescendo that finally explodes in a burst of energy. Follow up ‘In Light’ picks up gracefully, allowing instruments to blast off joyfully. Another track to stand out is sure to be ‘Hanging In’, which immediately catches your attention thanks to the tantalising, luring guitar riff, only to reveal a difficult state of things – ‘hanging in / To the thinnest piece of string that’s ever existed’. Expressing the general feeling of the whole album, singer Adam Thompson makes a point to clarify the precarious state he is in while asserting his will to stay true to himself – even though the world tries to push him under a bus, he will resist, because ‘no one knows you better than / you know yourself.’
An accomplished record in itself, it provides a few good, uplifting yet riotous, angry anthems, purely indie. While it does not show any enthusiastic peaks of experimentation or innovation, it remains a well-contained, well-developed album.
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