When a song starts with the sound of a hand drill being held against guitar pick-ups, you know it’s heralding something…fierce.
‘Photograph It’ does not speak in colours. It’s as simple as the sexy black and white video that accompanies it. It’s dirty, distorted guitars drowning in fuzzy noise and abrasive vocals. Chords crunch inside your head like you’re munching on tin foil, while the bass mushrooms across the soundscape, threatening to engulf anything that stands in its way. Meanwhile all this is punctuated by relentless and seedy rhythms that make you want to take to the dance floor like Travolta on heat. Because of their homeland, and the obvious allusions to post-punk, there are sure to be lazy comparisons linking Alamos to Franz Ferdinand, but if we have to match them up with another Scottish band then it should be early Idlewild. Cast your mind back to the days of ‘Captain’ when Roddy wasn’t afraid to yelp incomprehensibly over fractured guitar lines, and that gives you a little bit of the essence of this single.
They have created this immense sound and some people still have the nerve to say a three-piece can’t have it all. Any gaps in the sound are what give this band their edginess. Alamos have a blatant buzz of energy about them, the kind of vigour that can only be found in a collection of friends who possess the same passion. Yet at the same time you’re always conscious that they’re holding something back, like you’re constantly teetering on the brink of some kind of sonic barrage. It’s this underlying tension that makes their music so addictive, and makes them one of the most infectious young bands you’ve heard in a very long time.
'Photograph It' is released on June 27th, but you can pre-order it this very second from here