10:04s

A Common Wealth

Independent release

The 10:04s are a bewildering construct.

Known for their gigs in and around Edinburgh they have been quiet in terms of official releases for some time to return with an album mastered by Dick Beetham, fresh from Alt-J duties, that has lofty ambitions.

Nearly into their tenth year, their namechecked influences now include Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Joy Division, The National, Leonard Cohen, Interpol and Arcade Fire.

Now this might confuse people who were wowed by past urgent post-punk nuggets like SOS and Bad Grammar which had more in common with The Buzzcocks and The Clash.

In 2018, the band are happy to inject some sombre trumpet and haunting strings on an album that often appears to inhabit the kind of downbeat post-rock territory that The Twilight Sad inhabit while trying to create songs you could hold an old cigarette lighter in the air to.

It opens with a bang. The lead single Harlequin sets the bar cloud-ward with a mournfully meandering boy-girl vocals anthem that leaves you gagging for more just as the final killer hook grabs.

The tempo and style changes dramatically but the quality does not by track two. The rampant Everything Is Going To Be Alright features a searing buzz-saw guitar hook and the hilariously dispassionate catchline, "oh no, you're arms and legs have gone".

Glasshouse ends gratingly, perhaps, with the kind of 'ohs' that you expected from Arcade Fire's Funeral phase.

Another highlight, Carbon takes the kind of thing Glasgow's There Will Be Fireworks were known for with layered dynamics, a soft introduction topped and with a ferocious guitar climax that knocks you for six.

The closer Lights Out is another corker, even though it has been kicking around in some form for six years and veers closer to their more spiky earlier material.

So we have an album that sounds like a career hits package; plenty of ideas, although little joining them together other than the individuals involved. Ideas, however, that are often intoxicating.