Nobody wants to be classed as indie at the moment. It’s a dirty word, synonymous with fucking idiots playing utter shit to crowds of people who wish it was still 2005, denying the fact that they’re all just using the same old boring set of riffs and the identical sneers and working class credentials as they did in the 1970s. But just as the genre has been recycled and regurgitated, so has that rant, and it’s all incosequential in the grand scheme of things anyway. Guitar music will rise again regardless, and when it does, it will hopefully be due to the likes of Foreign Hands.
Based in Manchester, the band flirt with the kind of dull pop that The Vaccines have managed to make the beginnings of a career out of, but team that with a sense of atmosphere that their forerunners don’t quite possess. Still, there are understandably question marks in the first three minutes of Waves – mildly reductive, far from heart-in-mouth thrill-a-second stuff, it plods along until about halfway through it’s six minute running time, at which point it explodes into an pumping jam, expansive and free from the constraints that hold back the opening exchanges. If it struggles to hold your attention initially, give it time – you’ll be rewarded.
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