Ever wondered what the Cure would sound like if Judy Collins had been their singer instead of Robert Smith? Wonder no more

Hometown: London.

The lineup: Polly Mackey (guitar, vocals), Paul Bates (bass), Jac Roberts (guitar), Tom Ryan (drums), Sian Rosier (synth).

The background: Deaf Club, a new band from Wales based in London, make connections between disparate genres of music you might not have considered putting together, but now that they do suddenly make sense. They flirt with or fluctuate between goth, shoegaze, chillwave and a rocked-up folk, and it all sounds seamless. The critics agree: “The brooding atmospheres and rising tensions that run deep through their songs are the sounds of a band packed with potential and huge ambition,” wrote one.

We can only concur, especially with the bit about brooding atmospheres and rising tensions. And the bit about being packed with potential and huge ambition. All of it, really. We’ll take issue with “run deep” just to prove our acuity and refusal to be easily swayed. Deaf Club’s debut EP, Lull, released last year and available now for free download from their Bandcamp, is a neat introduction, and by neat we mean swirling, grandiose and dark. Opening track Hana, which has earned attention from Radio 1 and 6 Music, makes good on the above promise by going heavily on the big, echoey drums (feel the rising tension!) and shimmery guitar (breathe the brooding atmosphere!). It’s all headily reminiscent of goth, and immediately you are transported to the Batcave where the air is dense with lacquer and lugubrious devotion. Polly Mackey’s voice is keenly post-Siouxsie, as all girls’ voices in this area of music must always, by law, be, but there is a softness amid the stridency that, as we say, has elements of folk. She sounds distracted and disturbed, like a child who has seen too much.

The second track It, She, also takes you back three decades to the era of Alien Sex Fiend and Sex Gang Children, and to that other 1982, not the New Pop one, the interregnum between the demise of ABC and the rise of the Smiths, when goth was allowed to flourish. “So kill me, please,” sings Mackey, effecting a sort of parody of goth nihilism. Forest/Shore is slower, sepulchral, what the Cure’s Pornography might have sounded like had Robert Smith’s parts been sung by Judy Collins. It has an oppressive ambience, thick with the narcotic allure of despair. These are four minutes in which the band stretch out and prove themselves adept instrumentalists more than capable of conjuring up a mood as sacred as it is scarred. At one point they even hit a goth groove. Postcard is seven minutes of folk and goth during which Mackey sounds almost bluesy, more Elkie Brooks than Esben and the Witch. On new single Sunday the band move faster, with tribal drums, textural guitar and that Calvi/Zola strain of indie that strives to suggest all manner of dark desires and noir distress. We haven’t heard the B-side, Mirrors, so maybe we’ll go and see them play it at the Queen of Hoxton on 7 March. We’ll need that month to tease our hair.

The buzz: “We get the feeling this is just the start” – abeano.com.

The truth: Look over there – dry ice factory!.

Most likely to: Send in the clowns.

Least likely to: Lose your hearing.

What to buy: Sunday/Mirrors is due via White on White on 20 February. A limited-edition cassette-only release featuring the single and the band’s Lull EP is due in the spring via Kissability.

File next to: Esben and the Witch, All About Eve, Fairport Convention, Slowdive.

Links: deafclub.bandcamp.com.

Tuesday’s new band: Towns.

IndiePop and rockPaul Lesterguardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

News from: Music: Pop and rock | guardian.co.uk

Original Post Link http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/feb/06/new-band-deaf-club