Bonfire Tide – Talk Of Being Saved

Indie Rock

64%

 

There’s a glorious overabundance of music out there vying for our attention. Even putting to one side all the great songs that have come before in years gone by, just keeping track of the constant stream of new releases is sometimes too much to get your head around. Being so spoilt for choice, and so often lacking for time, I need ways to sift through it all to find the releases I most want to cover on the site. In that respect, first impressions can go a long way. Most often it’s the case that the artwork happens to catch my eye. Sometimes it can be the little things – a cool band name, someone citing acts that I love as their biggest influences, a debut album appealing to my desire to support new artists. Talk Of Being Saved, the debut record from Manchester outfit Bonfire Tide, appeared on my radar with all these things combined like a perfect storm, luring me in for a first listen. 

Therein lies the real test. Everything thus far has just been guiding towards pressing play. Grabbing your attention is one thing, keeping it is another. There are so many records that pique my interest only for them to fail to live up to expectations, and be pushed to one side as I move on to the next album on my list. This record was very nearly one of them. So much of the first half of Talk Of Being Saved feels like a well intentioned imitation of acts like The National and Bon Iver, without ever truly capturing what makes those bands moving. The lyrics here seemed a tad generic, the arrangements just sparse and simple enough to leave you feeling like something is missing, the vocals too calm and level to offer much expression (or in the case of ‘Romance Isn’t Dead’, buried under unnecessary effects). By the time I’d reached the mid point, the bland balladry of ‘Armour’, I was ready to move on. It’s not that there was anything here constituting a major misstep, nothing you could call bad or unpleasant, it just felt like it never really got off the ground. 

Yet I stuck around, and in doing so I discovered that this record saves all its best tricks for the B side. ‘The Old Boys’ is a superb slow burner, the strings building, the chorus worming its way deeper into your brain with each repetition, the dark and dynamic rhythm section in the final minute offering the album a welcome burst of energy. The guest vocals from Ellysse Mason on ‘Shadows’ swirl and soar with delightful grace and expression, throwing down the gauntlet for frontman David Barden, who responds by delving unto as-yet untapped depth and grit for the Lord Huron-esque synth tinged folk of ‘Submarine’.

The interesting mix of intricate drum patterns and bright, bittersweet guitar lines in the opening of ‘Strangers’ could absolutely pass as a new song from The National, before it winds up morphing into an entirely different, but no less beautiful beast by songs’ end. The delightful double dose of ‘Elskan’ and ‘All Of Us’ closes the record on a light and airy vibe, with the latter feeling especially stunning with its almost orchestral swells. In the end, Talk Of Being Saved defied my first impressions not once, but twice – luring me in, losing its grip, before finally reeling me in the way I hoped it would. Grabbing your attention is easy, keeping it is a far harder trick to master, and Bonfire Tide got there in the end.