Waylayers :: "Magnets"

An enormous introduction, East Londoners Waylayers breach into the pop view finder with latest single, "Magnets." With shades of the chillwave fever - hell, they even say "I feel fields all around me," which is more than enough for Earnest Greene to cry, "Derivation!" - and shades of the angular pop music of Foals and Two Door Cinema Club, "Magnets" is an upbeat and unselfconscious record about connection and connecting. Ostensibly concerning finding "magnets" within and getting in touch with the "fields" all around us, Waylayers stomp their way to the conclusion only after creating a digital layer of the electrons that swirl around us, the invisible vibrations that make the world hum. "Magnets" is an absolute burner, snapping down-beat and spaceship guitars, a single built to pull with a sort of impossible and unseen gravity.

Wild Combination :: "When We're Together (We Don't Worry)"

Wild Combination wouldn't be the first 20-somethings to wonder if interpersonal relations were better in person. Relationships, for better or worse, are best conducted at close range, or so the band contends on the bright and mournful single, "When We're Together (We Don't Worry)". Distance makes the heart grow jealous and biting, a compiler of so many miniature slights, an overly analytical librarian with a fatal streak. The arrangement buzzes with guitars recalling Foals and purposeful synths all leading to a cloud-clearing chorus around the eponymous and optimistic lyric, "We don't worry". Of course, the other, darker current runs through the verses with musings about lost sparks, faded love and broken faith. Proximity can be everything, the dividing line between a chorus of bleeding optimism and verses of over-blown despair.

The Cast Of Cheers :: "Animals"

A sweet intersection of the friscilating guitar arpeggios of Foals and the slam-along shouts of We Were Promised Jetpacks comes the The Cast Of Cheers and their top-of-the-room single, "Animals". The melody dodges itself along a modulating and instantly memorable rise and fall, a mimic of the guitar and the pebbled bass line. Everything is set at angles, a sort of potential energy that continues to collapse into a chorus, simple and true, about the horrifying commonalities of human romance. Not surprisingly, the conclusion is, "we are animals," a shouted and triumphant revelation. The final fade out representing that moment before we break and pass a nasty and brutish salvation around like the State of Nature, ripping one another to shreds.

Coastal Cities :: "Think Tank"

Sometimes you need useless comparisons. It's a start, after all, naming those things; you, a pattern recognizing machine built for solid navigation. Beyond the savageries of its alliteration, Coastal Cities' stunning new single, "Think Tank", a precocious and explosive offering, will feel both very new and achingly familiar. The easiest footnotes are early Bloc Party, but somehow more juvenile and charming, and a less electric Two Door Cinema Club (circa the time when they had no drummer and used an iPod). "Think Tank" finds its energy in repetition ("I like you but I really don't love you") and a final movement that kicks at the 2:03-mark and recalls the most soaring moments of the grand tradition of poppy, post-punk. There are elements of The Drums, but somehow a less annoying version, mixed with the youthful embolisms of teenagers who don't care a lick about the proper nouns in this paragraph, the comparisons wholly irrelevant if unmistakeable. This is the cost of comparison, the robbery of emotional aesthetics at the hands of critical analysis. So when someone leans close and says, "Don't these guitars remind you of the mathematical arpeggios of Foals?", you can clearly and confidently say no.

Coastal Cities - Thinktank by CoastalCities