Album Review by Mark Bayross
Wales seems to be a bit of a production line for disaffected young indie bands at the moment – this is the debut album from Porthcawl four piece Tetra Splendour, the latest band to take up guitars and make a play for the ‘bright young hopes’ corner of LATER WITH JOOLS HOLLAND.
Combining the focused noise of early Radiohead with the shuffling rhythms of The Charlatans, Tetra Splendour have crafted an album that is worth investigation. SPLENDID ANIMATION starts off with the psychedelic space-rock of LANDMINE, and after the summery melody of ETA and the lush debut single POLLEN FEVER, you’ll be hooked.
Singer Gareth Jones’ sounds far too worldly for a 20 year old, veering from cracked-sounding Thom Yorke (on the graceful MURIEL’S MOTORHOME) to a belting Sting (CFCs), and there is a sense of maturity in the music too, ranging from electronic-enhanced rockers like BLESS MY SOUL to the SGT. PEPPER-style epic of single MR. BISHI.
While undeniably the sound of a young band still learning the ropes (Jones can sing flat and the music occasionally loses the plot and veers into a tedious wall of jangling guitars – see IN FLIGHT MANUAL), this is an album of ambition and breadth – the band already seem at ease incorporating piano, strings and brass into their sound, so who knows where they’ll go from here?
One to watch.
