Silverbacks
Archive Material
[Full Time Hobby]
Po-faced saviours of indie rock, take note! A little sense of humour goes a long way. You get the feeling that Dublin five-piece Silverbacks don’t take themselves too seriously. When the songs are this good, who cares about looking cool?
Their 2020 debut album Fad was an exciting melting pot of styles, and Silverbacks have doubled down on the elements that worked best to produce a more cohesive but no less exciting album.
Archive Material hits the ground sprinting. The title track is a propulsive blast of stop-start drums, tight guitars and Daniel O’Kelly’s wonderfully abstract lyrics.
This is followed by A Job Worth Something, which manages the unlikely feat of expressing white-collar guilt as a stirring, call-and-response indie anthem that builds to some Thin Lizzy-esque duelling guitar lines.
Other standouts include the stuttering Different Kind of Holiday and the ethereal instrumental interlude Carshade. Any time bassist Emma O’ Hanlon sings is also a highlight; there’s a weary cynicism just below the dreamy surface.
Musically, Silverbacks are a well-oiled machine. The guitar work of the O’Kelly brothers and Peadar Kearney shifts fluently between angular post-rock and blurry shoegaze over O’ Hanlon’s solid basslines and Gary Wickham’s chaotically tight drumming.
There isn’t a single superfluous note, beat or lyric on Archive Material. Who said second albums had to be difficult?
Words – Joe Joyce
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Kilian O’Kelly – Luzhny’s Layer
Junk Drawer – Ready For The House
The Rapture – In The Grace Of Your Love
