The Laundry Shop – Brighten The Ways (Stressed Sumo Records)
A song of two halves, this. On one hand, you have a barnstorming, straight-to-the-point riff to open proceedings, along the lines of Cable or Idlewild back when they were exuberant and fun. And on the other, you have a breathy, soaring verse straight out of the Big Book of Mainstream Anthemic Indie Rock. For the first couple of repetitions, the contrast works well. It’s a pleasant diversion away from the thousands of bands who still think quiet-loud-quiet-loud is the only acceptable dynamic in modern music, and The Laundry Shop come across something like a spikier Built To Spill. Sadly, beyond a short instrumental coda, they may as well have simply copied and pasted the first half of the song onto the second rather than waste money on studio time, which means that the track becomes slightly boring even within its three-minute running time. Keep it short, you lot.
