The Slow Readers Club album review

The Slow Readers Club – ‘The Slow Readers Club’

[rating:4/5]
Buy The Slow Readers Club [Explicit]

Regular readers may remember I featured Manchester four-piece The Slow Readers Club’s single ’Feet On Fire’ in the New Music section recently. Well I’ve managed to get hold of their self-titled debut album (out 21 May on Extenso Music) and can assure you it’s just as good as I hoped it would be.

The Slow Readers Club is an album dedicated to pounding, invigorating rhythms and dark, twisted lyrics. Opener ’One Chance’ sets this tone brilliantly with an unsettling, barely there guitar intro and singer Aaron Starkie’s, err, stark lyrics (sorry!)

Combining uplifting melodies with more downbeat and serious lyrics is not a new technique, the Manics built a career on it 20 years ago and there’s plenty of examples before them, but even so, The Slow Readers Club are a refreshing and invigorating addition to today’s slightly stale music industry. ’One More Minute’, ’Block Out The Sun’, ’All Hope’, ’Sirens’ and ’Feet On Fire’ are all great examples of this – mixing elements of The Editors, The Killers and Interpol into an exciting and engrossing debut album.

My pick for album highlight is ’Follow Me Down’, a brilliantly haunting track dripping with raw emotion and intensity. Starkie’s vocals suck you into a world of hopelessness and despair (“Just face it love / We’ve been lying to ourselves / So come hither / And follow me down”) and manages to make the resignation and acceptance of our pitiful fate as uplifting as it is inevitable.

On the strength of this debut, I’d say The Slow Readers Club are definitely a band to keep an eye on – and definitely well worth catching live if you get the chance. If you still need convincing, check out these tracks from the album:

What do you think? Excited for the album? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below…


2 thoughts on “The Slow Readers Club album review

    Indie Anna

    (2012-04-09 - 9:48 pm)

    I love this band! The album is fantastic and every tune is great *****

    Ben

    (2012-04-19 - 3:27 pm)

    Album is cr@p!! Nothing good about this group at all, losers!

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