Calories can be bad for your body, but Basic Nature sure is good for the soul.
Birmingham is massive but its music scene, less so. The second city increasingly imports talent and offers up a generous and fast-growing spread of club nights and gigs; yet, weirdly, it has exported so few bands of merit.
Calories are a band to make Brum feel proud, though. The trio's second album, after 2009’s Adventuring, is an almost unblemished indie-rock tome that rewards repeated listening. Basic Nature comes with little hype and a marketing budget of very nearly zero, yet it is one of the best British guitar albums released for ages. Anthemic lo-fi pop offerings like Mortal Boys and Orchard Girls are about as far from removed from The Twang's embarrassing output as the shiny new Birmingham is from the clapped-out flyover city of yore.
Lees de rest van deze review op BBC CD recensies (Engels)
Bron: BBC Music