Cymbals Eat Guitars - Pretty Years

With their fourth full-length, Cymbals Eat Guitars have produced an in-your-face rollercoaster ride that takes you skywards, leaves you hanging about at the top for a bit, before dropping down in one huge swoop of adrenaline. It turbulently clatters through a spectrum of emotions, replicating the urgency and unpredictable nature of life itself, and it’s at its most euphoric when it doesn’t try so hard to push the boundaries. However, a stand-off, prickly attitude just makes it a little too hard to really fall in love with.

The whole album was pieced together in four days, and each song was plied together in only one or two takes. This gives ‘Pretty Years’’ songs an unrelenting, punchy urgency. Yet, it’s not until it gets to ‘Wish’ - a track that practically jives into the room with a hook that Bruce Springsteen himself wouldn’t sneer at - that things start to get really interesting.

For all its high points, however, as a whole body of work ‘Pretty Years’ just doesn’t quite sit together. It dips and dives between tracks – ‘Beam’ is a hard-hitting blast of noise, whilst ‘WELL’ has you dreaming of road-trips through America – and it feels as though there’s a lack of focus for what the album should really be. This is further emphasised by closing track ‘Shrine’, which should be the album’s epic send-off but instead continues to grasp around in the dark for direction.

It may not be a steady, cohesive piece of work but when Cymbals Eat Guitars alter the lens to properly focus, there are moments in ‘Pretty Years’ that are full of wonder and frenetic urgency. It just falls short of completely engulfing your interest and really exposing itself as anything completely fresh and inspiring. It’s pretty in places, but you’re left wishing that it was truly beautiful.