Silver/Back/Club – Silver/Back/Club EP
It could be said that there aren’t any predefined rules for a what a band’s debut EP should typically achieve. A step up from the hastily cobbled together demo, it presents an opportunity to nail the early creative vision conjured from months of rehearsals and gigs, and while it’s not required to be perfect, it wields the power to either put people off your band for good or have them yearning for more.
Welsh quartet Silver/Back/Club’s self-titled debut EP goes a long way to achieving the latter in just under half a minute. Opener ‘Pale Face’ almost immediately sinks its hooks in with an infectious three-note guitar riff, giving way to an equally memorable synth line that was last deployed in such an effective fashion on early recordings by fellow Wales-based outfit Los Campesinos.
The comparisons stop there, though, as Silver/Back/Club proceed to tread a route laden with glistening, minor key atmospherics on second track ‘Lewy’, which showcases the fragility of guitarist and vocalist Dave Thomas’s vibrato-tinged, ethereal delivery. Straddling the line between The Irrepressibles’ Jamie McDermott and Bombay Bicycle Club’s Jack Steadman, Thomas’s voice possesses a distinct tone that could prove to be the band’s secret weapon when continuing to flesh out and develop their sound, of which they have already landed on with a firm footing while leaving themselves room for progression.
If any criticism can be levelled at the track, and at the EP in general, it’s that the vocal melodies could benefit from some variation to keep things interesting as songs revisit their structural parts. This is particularly evident on the aforementioned track ‘Lewy’, which begins to outstay its welcome long before the main melody returns three minutes and fourteen seconds in before continuing for over a minute more.
That said, rollicking closing track ‘It’s A Wolf’ keeps things tight with a great dirty bass line and ominous, delay-inflected guitar lines that could’ve fit on several tracks from Les Savy Fav’s Let’s Stay Friends. Reaching its climax in a crescendo of foot-stomping guitars and screaming, it’s a surprising flurry of noise that introduces the quartert’s raw rock chops at a very late stage during the EP.
Silver/Back/Club possess a frontman with that elusive discernable twang and have musicianship in droves — two traits any new band would kill to have – meaning that if they can just spice up the vocal melodies and continue striking a balance between dreamy and distorted while developing their sound, their next release could be something very special indeed.
