Always a brave move, calling your band a silent anything – not the first adjective you associate with music, unless you are thinking of John Cage – but I suspect the Oxfordian quartet of Robert Stevenson (vox, keys), Lewis Jones (guitar), Ali Hussain (bass) and Spencer Walker (drums) wish to add the certain sepia-tinted gravitas associated with the age before talkies to their indie pop proceedings. Of course, the unspoken synonym of ‘brave’ is ‘stupid’, so this could be the proverbial bullet in the hypothetical foot by providing lazy hack writer with more ammo than is entirely necessary.
It starts well with ‘Sleeping Pills’, so I holster up the cynicism cannon for a moment. Chime synths purr along as a distorted guitar ratchets up, like an expensive high performance car accelerating into the night witnessed only by myopic cat’s eyes winking and twinkling as the overdrive grumbles into life with the mathy post-rock verse, embellished by Robert’s half whispered cold war paranoiac vocals. As he sings about a hats containing “tiny bombs or sleeping pills”, you are swept up in a sound as drippily romantic as Keane or as epic as Muse, but without the broadness of the former or the bombast of the latter. By the close of the first track, you are quite exhausted.
‘Julie Jane’ mercilessly maintains the pace, with Spencer pounding out an artery rupturing beat that almost bursts the song. Ali sends the bass rumbling and muttering like a regretful lyrical drunk as Lewis steers his guitar into the choppy seas of Interpolic wail-riffery and Robert goes all doe-eyed and psychopathic. Still good.
Okay, I’m getting tried now. ‘Thirteen Times The Strength’ has that same pounding rhythm, that same earnest optimism, that same rolling Nyman-esque piano. I can detect a touch of laziness here, but Robert and Ali try to paper the cracks with a wonderfully expressive bass line and a desperately downward spiralling vocal. But I am beginning to detect a theme…
Fortunately, ‘One Wrong Door’ comes in the nick of time as the defining track on the album. A cello deviates proceedings as the riff oscillates decadently like a Noel Coward tango. Vocals shoot off into the stratosphere melodically while remaining earth-bound lyrically. It has all that steampunk elegance of the Grammatics and though it doesn’t quite have Dominic Ord’s chops vocally it is a heart-cracking marvel.
Which makes the next three songs really disappointing. Returning to the formula of Nyman piano, one-paced drums and almost redundant guitars where there is nothing wrong with them… there’s nothing spectacular about them either. Apart from the soulfully seductive bass, which shines throughout.
I am about to give up, but fortunately ‘You Will Leave A Mark’ prevents me from unloading. Using a heavier piano line and a more definite guitar wail to underline the expression of love as a scar – “my heart is bursting again” telexes a swooning Robert frankly – makes for an exciting, mortifying experience, a tantalising taste of all that A Silent Film could achieve. I’ll leave off on the last three tracks as I just want to remember them doing this…
A Silent Film tread dangerous waters, that’s for sure. I can detect a tangible temptation to sell out and go for that Keane/Nyman/Muse sound by the numbers… but they’d be selling themselves short. Though there are no real stinkers here, there are some definite high points that just eclipse the rest – I think I’ve made myself clear which ones I’m talking about. It’s arrogant of me, I know, but I think that ASF have a real chance to shine and succeed beyond the whole commercial schtick if they dare to be different, get decadent and get outspoken.
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