Every now and again, an EP bursts fully-formed from your speakers and grabs your attention without hesitation or delay. There’s plenty of room in this world for ‘growers’ or works which you ‘need to live with for a bit’, and it’s this variety which prevents the world from stagnating into a congealed lake of aural moss the likes of which you’ll find in any parochial, ‘Has Weston-Super-Mare Got The X-Factor’ style sadism festivals up and down the country every weekend of the summer.
No, what summer demands is great songs which take root and make you want to live with them. Music which compels you to spend time with it rather than issuing a proscribed minimum-listen limit before you ‘get it’. It’s that which you’ll find on Ghetto Hikes, the début EP from Sheffield’s O Captain.
After a ‘found footage’ spoken word intro – you don’t hear enough of those in 2014 – ‘Summer Party Jam’ gets off to an auspicious start via some deliberately-poor guitar production before a lush wall of melodic riffs and heartfelt vocals wash forth, carrying the listener along with them.
In a world where it’s somehow become completely acceptable for British bands to sing as if they spent their formative years at an international school somewhere off the coast of Southern California, it’s incredibly refreshing to hear a vocalist singing without transatlantic affectation, let alone in tune. This band go far deeper than just the neck.
After teasing the listener with the harmonised, melodic foreplay of its “turn out the bright lights” refrain, the track only has time to establish itself before it plays out. I’m all for brevity, but 2 minutes? O Captain (my captain), you why must you tease us so?
‘The Union’ demonstrates a classic early-emo dynamic with a Morrissey/Jesse Lacey inspired vocal lilting over a mid-paced melodic backing seamlessly segues into a segment of guitar interplay which wouldn’t be out of place on latter-day RX Bandits output. More of this, please. Lots more.
That’s not to say they sound anything like RXB of course. Track closer (and my personal favourite) ‘A New Year’ comes on like a more groove-laden version of Lonely The Brave’s smash ‘Backroads’, and in doing so sets out O Captain’s stall clearly: they’ve taken current darlings like LTB and superstars-in-waiting The 1975 under the surgeon’s knife, cut away the dirge and pretension and emerged with three slices of emo-tinged, melodic rock perfection.
If they can continue to forge a path away from the generic productions, triggered drums and ambiguous vocal stylings of their contemporaries (and write some more of Dem Riffs) we can expect to hear a lot more from O Captain in 2014.
ROB BARBOUR