Snow Patrol aren’t just any old indie rock band. With hits like Chasing Cars, Run, Open Your Eyes and Signal Fire under their belt already, it’s not surprising that we’ve come to expect nothing short of excellence from the Bangor rock group.

Snow Patrol have been lying low since A Hundred Million Suns was released back in 2008. But now their return is imminent. Called Out In The Dark will be the first comeback single to be released this September from their much anticipated sixth studio album, Fallen Empires. What will the boys unleash this time around? Snow Patrol have suggested that a change of direction away from the group’s rock foundations may be in store for us, taking this new album to exciting unknown waters. The Northern Irish band have been working with Grammy award winning music producer Garret ‘Jacknife’ Lee in Los Angeles to bring a new dimension to their already wide repertoire.

The forthcoming single is a delightful, electronica infused, powerful gem of a song. Beginning with an underlying, steady acoustic guitar riff that runs relentlessly throughout this track, quickly followed by a dancelike drumbeat which boldly kicks in alongside Gary Lightbody’s distinct vocals declaring, ‘it’s like we just can’t help ourselves cause we don’t know how to back down.’ The song builds momentum and reaches a climax with a striking, textured, electronic heavy chorus, ‘we are listening and we are not blind, this is your life, this is your time.’ Lyrically, it’s rather poetic at times: ‘how the heavens, they opened up like arms of dazzling gold, with our rain washed histories, well they do not need to be told.’ The song aptly ends with the repeating, hypnotic guitar riff and its accompanying drum riff. On a happy note, we are left with the notion of hope and ‘magic’, despite adversity, despite all odds, despite the ‘dark.’

Snow Patrol have delivered again and again, and this taster track has certainly whetted my appetite. Such an unveiling promises more goods to come. ‘We are listening.’ 

Here’s a thesis: The Horrors have been writing pop songs since they formed, but until now they’ve been doing it so subversively that no-one’s really noticed. Skying changes all that, with a new taste for soaring choruses and anthemic key changes, and a developed enthusiasm for pure melody. At its best, the band’s third album showcases some maturing songcraft. Lead single ‘Still Life’ and the baggy, psychedelic opener ‘Changing the Rain’ have an assured unity to them, as if they’ve emerged fully formed from the Dalston basement where the band wrote, rehearsed, and recorded the album.

In particular, krautgaze juggernaut ‘Moving Further Away’ – a worthy heir to 2009’s ‘Sea Within a Sea’ – rewards repeated listening as swooning noise-rock guitar darts around Tom Cowan’s synthesizers; Faris Badwan’s spectral vocals unite the disparate strands (even the sampled seagull noises make a weird kind of sense) until the whole thing accelerates into a kind of shuddering ecstasy. ‘I Can See Through You’ is smaller, stranger, and comes with a strangely vintage feel, as if Joe Meek had survived to mess around with analogue synths and phasers in the ’80s.

Most satisfyingly, though, The Horrors seem to have finally and fully transcended the ‘record collection rock’ tag that they’ve previously attracted. While previous albums Strange House and Primary Colours were decidedly more than the sum of their parts, those parts were fairly easy to pick out. On Skying, the sheer density of sounds and influences refracted, inverted, and indeed invented mean that it comes much closer to a unified and unique whole.

The greatest achievement of Skying is this unity, the creation and establishment over the course of the album of a swirling, dreamlike sonic world. Subversive elements flicker around the edges of what might otherwise be straight-up pop songs: unsettling, clattering synths meet guitars played backwards, colliding into each other and distorted beyond recognition. Some songs unexpectedly change direction: ‘Endless Blue’ floats like Neu! playing bossa nova for a minute and a half, and then erupts into a snarling interplay between Josh Hayward’s distorted guitar (taking cues from Sonic Youth) and Cowan’s chilly synth lines; while ‘Monica Gems’ pulses between jagged riffing and fluid shoegaze-pop – some near-inaudible backing vocals and trumpet fanfares make it sound like it’s being haunted by the ghost of Sergeant Pepper.

This shifting but cohesive musical atmosphere is the album’s major strength, but it also leads – paradox alert – to one of its weaknesses. Several tracks on the album are weaker than they should be, seeming like mere vehicles for sonic experimentation and falling short of the consummate wholeness achieved elsewhere. Badwan’s vocals are  cryptic, allusive, symbolic; the cynical might say vague, but they’re delivered with subtlety, burning and expanding slowly into the band’s organic sounds. On ‘Wild Eyed’ and ‘Dive In’, and particularly the first five touching but aimless minutes of ‘Oceans Burning’, there’s lots to enjoy but little to remember.

That’s not to say that any of Skying’s tracks are actually bad, just that they fade slightly into the background compared to the more developed material on display. Nonetheless Skying is an immersive and fascinating experience from beginning to end, working – like the best albums – as a coherent whole with several stand-out tracks. It’s certainly a unique sonic artefact, and once The Horrors have written a few more songs as good as the best ones here, they’ll have both the complexity and the tunes to be unstoppable next time around.

After a two year hiatus, involving two separate solo albums, a bike accident, and a career-threatening car crash, there was certainly a feeling amongst the packed crowd at Hoxton Bar that we were lucky to be witnessing Two Gallants’ return to the road. Tonight’s gig was the second consecutive sold-out night at the venue, and its intimate setting enhanced this atmosphere of expectation, which was not to be disappointed.

Two Gallants are a two-piece made up of childhood friends Adam Stephens (vocals/guitar/harmonica) and Tyson Vogel (drums/vocals), who play an original, punk- tinged blend of blues and folk. The first thing that hit me when they started playing is just how much noise it is possible for two men and their instruments to make. The second thing was quite how brilliant they are at playing them, with Stephens’ intricate finger picking weaving perfectly around Vogel’s powerful, almost melodic, drumming. It really isn’t surprising to find out that these two have been playing music together since the age of twelve.

The set included songs from all four of their releases, as well as plenty of new material, which went down almost as well as old favourites, something not many bands pull off.  The intensity and emotion powering the whole gig suited the lyrics of many of their songs, which range from tales of heartbreak to narratives about murder and slavery. Whether playing louder numbers such as ‘Las Cruces Jail’ or sharing the microphone for the new, acoustic ‘Broken Eyes’, both were clearly putting everything they had into their performance, demonstrated both by the amount of sweat pouring off them and the way Vogel occasionally collapsed over his drums at the end of a song. The passion and honesty displayed in the performance led to slightly awkward silences as the crowd waited for Stephens to retune his guitar in between songs, but idle chit-chat might have felt anticlimactic in these moments.  Instead, I happily settled for watching a strange love-triangle developing in the second row.

Two Gallants are a band I’d wanted to see for years, and as they finished with a drum-less rendition of ‘Seems Like Home to Me’, my only complaint was that it had to end so soon (but not as early as it did for the jilted boyfriend in the second row, who’d already stormed off). If you don’t know this band, take a punt on iTunes or YouTube, but if you ever get the chance, go and see them perform, where the songs can really come to life.

“Never judge a book by its cover.” I’m sure you’ve all heard this phrase countless times and, to some extent, agree with its simple sentiment of searching for true identity behind an outward appearance. However, as New York based avant-R&B artist Autre Ne Veut’s latest EP proves, there are exceptions to every rule. The moist folds of pink flesh adorning Body’s front cover are a perfect embodiment of the music contained within, and any listeners struck by the vulgarity of the photo are likely to react with a similar level of repulsion when listening to this EP.

Opening with a lone undulating synth line, lead single ‘Sweetheart’ starts Body off on a particularly queasy note. Cluttered with cheap sounding keys and an oppressively rasping beat, the song submerges its catchy vocal melody beneath such layers of sticky sleaze that it almost fails to register at all. Sadly, the rest of Body follows suit. With the production throughout this EP, just as on the album artwork, Autre Ne Veut appears to be aiming for an ice-cool seductiveness but instead finds himself falling into crass excess.

What is most disappointing about this record, even for those attracted to the production style, is that Body is completely lacking in substance beneath its surface. Autre Ne Veut’s songwriting throughout the EP is formulaic at best and, at times, downright lazy; that ‘Not The One’ passes by in little over two minutes is no bad thing: its grating pitch shifted vocals refusing to develop at all throughout the song. Any personality that might exist in Autre Ne Veut’s songwriting has been suppressed by his obsession with maintaining his ultra-hip facade, ultimately leaving his music hollow. Released on the much buzzed about Hippos In Tanks label, Body will undoubtedly appeal to the label’s hoards of obsessive followers, but for the rest of us this EP is so devoid of heart, so slathered in sleaze that it is unlikely to connect during its brief twelve minute runtime. 

Brooklyn pop-rapper Theophilus London made a noticeable splash in recent months with his sugary, stylised hip hop, especially as featured in February’s breakthrough debut EP, Lover’s Holiday. A somewhat overly-laid-back flow aside, the production was lush, spacious, and effortlessly catchy, combining a keen pop sensibility with elements of more conventional hip hop, à la early LL Cool J. The attractive mix was typified by his pulsating, seductive collaboration with Solange Knowles, ‘Flying Overseas’, fleshed out with copious bass, a tense high hat shuffle, and sung hooks courtesy of both artists.

Lover’s Holiday and its associated singles rightly generated a large dose of hype for Timez Are Weird These Days, London’s first full-length effort. The essentials of the formula remain the same, but London missteps somewhat, borrowing not only the candied synths of radio pop but also its vacuous lyricism. The quintessential cocksure tropes of brazen hip hop are all here – girls, money, cars – but sound even emptier when boiled down into simplistic pop hooks. We are subjected to a full twelve lines of “Last name London, the first name Theophilus, Theophilus, Theophilus” in ‘Last Name London’: that’s thirty-six Theophiluses. He continues to repeat the obvious on ‘Love is Real’, itself complete with auto-tune and an absurdly melodramatic bridge: “Try to make the most of this. Don’t throw it all away. She had to change her number twice, and no time to count the days.” Oh dear.

Ultimately, the best material on Timez is lifted from the EP: ‘Flying Overseas’ regrettably doesn’t appear, but Timez does include the well-crafted ‘Why Even Try’ (an excellent example of London’s casual flow at its best), and the glitch-hop single ‘Girls Girls $’, which successfully (and hilariously) reduces hip hop’s chief obsessions to mere shouted slogans. Those not blessed with as much imagined cash as London, then, might do well to avoid the filler of Timez, and opt instead for this year’s far sleeker Lover’s Holiday EP.