Can someone go and check that Ireland is OK, please?!? It’s just so far we’re thirty one days into 2024 and we’ve had two album of the year contenders from bands from the Emerald Isle, but they’re quite angry and dark. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence because what isn’t angry and dark about these days?!? Maybe they’re just far more poetic, articulate and artistic about it all.
If Sprints were the East coast rage and raw aggression in Dublin, New Dad are the dark, brooding, quietly intense from the Atlantic West coast side in Galway. It harnesses the images of dark nights, cliff tops, the black, forboding ocean below, smashing against the rocks. The echoes of the vocals are reverberating through the bays and coves.
First and foremost, this is a beautiful record. It seems like forever ago that album opener ‘Angel’ appeared as an early single, and whilst there have been several teasers since, they all make perfect sense on Madra. It’s an ideal first song. Immediate, pop sensibility, chorus that soars, heavy bridge with thundering guitar chords. Ticks all the boxes.
‘Sickly Sweet’ has a bassline reminiscent of ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ but the chorus has all the hallmarks of Garbage with Shirley Manson vocal delivery with a little less snarl.
The juxtaposition of the sometimes harsh, dark and menacing tunes, and Julie Dawson’s vocals work expertly, the double tracked, reverb heavy quality sound so huge against the backdrop but are ethereal, swooping around the mix, ghostly and haunting.
‘In My Head’ is equally immediate and was the first single back in May last year. Not for the first or last time on this LP, Julie articulates better than most, how it feels to be stuck in your head, for people to assume how you feel, how you should feel, comparing you to other people. We’re all built differently and think differently “You see/We haven’t seen the same things/
We don’t have the same dreams/
So, you can’t really see me“.
‘Let Go’ is just waiting to be included in the next Scream movie soundtrack, it has horror movie stamped all over it.
‘Dreaming Of You’ is far more, ahem, dream pop, possibly the most straight forward indie track on here.
‘White Ribbons’ is just so gorgeously minimal and beautifully simple. Again, but in a completely different way, it is wide screen, panoramic, cinematic, forty five storey sky scraping love, life and loss in a chocolate covered, velvety smooth nutshell.
New Dad have encapsulated a spot on amalgamation of Shoegaze, Dream Pop, Grunge, Emo and Indie in one beautiful record. January has set the bar high. Hope you’re watching February, March and the rest. You’ve got some work to do.
