Priestgate - Eyes Closed For The Winter

Priestgate’s rising star owes as much to the blurrable boundaries of modern indie as to clearer cut new wave architecture; the Yorkshire-hailing gloom-pop purveyors tread a fine line between both worlds - lending a liminality to their debut EP, midway between The Horrors and Lust For Youth. Nailed down with drawling credibility, the five-piece hold their own amongst a slew of crooning post-punk bedfellows - Rob Schofield’s sonorous tones locked between careening guitar hooks and understated synth touches, flicking between the spirited and sepulchral in knee jerk elasticity. This finds its strength via the Robert Smith-esque leer of ‘Bedtime Story’ and ‘Eyes Closed For The Winter’’s ghostly glare – the bittersweet, all too brief ‘By The Door’ proving the main attraction in this marriage of looping riffs and echoed refrains. The outfit strut between intimate and aloof with a raffish sincerity that injects life into well-worn genre moves, a dose of dry-iced melancholia.