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Review: Amber Run

★☆☆☆☆

One star

“It sounds a bit like a bunch of 16-year-olds recorded it in a shed, put an EP on SoundCloud and thought they were the shit.” This was a friend’s fair summation of the vibe of Amber Run’s debut album 5am. This boy band, formed in 2012 at the University of Nottingham, struck me as a Bastille-Chet Faker hybrid with the echoey monotony of some of James Blake’s earlier work.

With their debut album including songs oh-so imaginatively named with titles such as ‘Spark’, ‘Hurricane’ and ‘Shiver’, I knew what to expect. Slightly catchy and upbeat, ‘Spark’ makes for a somewhat refreshing change from the seemingly endless drone of the others. I guess I’d even go so far as to say I quite liked it.

My favourite song by far has to be ‘Noah’, for as a theologian I couldn’t resist a song about a biblical epic. However, it is also the most whiney track of the album (which is quite the achievement) with the singer moaning “Nooooaaaahhhhhh” endlessly. Overall, this is a pretty poor album. The lyrics are neither clever, funny nor moving. It is completely unoriginal, but also pretty inoffensive. However, if I had to say anything in defence of 5am, it made excellent, if rather unimpressive, background music for collection revision.

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