Showing Off To Thieves
Everyone Has Their Secrets EP
Bristol/Bath quartet Showing Off To Thieves certainly know how to rock. Opening track ‘Everyone Has Their Secrets’ kicks into its gargantuan riff and immediately my head, hands and feet start grooving along. This is going to be a record I like!
To these ears, the band sounds somewhat akin to Hundred Reasons or Reuben, the songs certainly twist and turn like the best of the output from both of those bands.
Where Showing Off To Thieves really score (along with their taste in quality riffs and intelligent arrangements) are in the hook-laden choruses which they purvey. It’s rare for a record in this genre to carry as much pop nous as ‘Everyone Has Their Secrets’ pulls off, and does so effortlessly. ‘Parody of an Angel’ is the second song on the record (featuring another quality chorus) and the second seismic breakdown in two songs. It’s no wonder this young band are making quite a name for themselves.
By the time ‘Billy’s Revenge’ and ‘Save Me’ kick in, it’s no longer a surprise that the songs are perfectly formed slices of emo-pop (but not in a Paramore/Fall Out Boy way!). ‘Save Me’ features some simple, but extremely effective vocal harmonies and yet more quality use of dynamics.
‘You Never Cease To Amaze Me’ is the EP’s shortest song, and it’s most conventionally “pop” song, calling Biffy Clyro to mind, but wiping the floor with anything ‘Puzzle’ could offer. Closer, ‘Safety in Numbers’ is a slow-burning epic and a perfect ending to a record which leaves me aching for more.
If this band can pull it off on a full-length album and in a live setting, and I see no reason at all why they wouldn’t, we could have a really special proposition on our hands here.
Guest article from Haydon S.
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