Album Review cleopatrick - BUMMER

While Royal Blood have gone off in search of funky new territories, cleopatrick know the value of sticking close to home. Two friends since kindergarten, ‘BUMMER’ is rich with the tightly-packed references and singular vision that comes from being raised in a town so small that they literally couldn’t find a bassist, paring their sound back to just drums and a guitar. Luckily, their member-quantity is far from a limitation. No one in rock right now sounds like Luke Gruntz - the product of a fucked up bar fight between Caleb Followill and Adam Levine, he commands an intimidating presence, tongue still pouring blood around his slurred vowels. Wielding a sledgehammer guitar, he dips riffs in molasses and watches the splatter – a guttural take on garage rock that takes courage from being the underdog. Though the primal vibe drags a little in the mid section (both ‘Why July’ and ‘Peppers Ghost’ could do with a little more hook), there is enough in cleopatrick’s hyper-specific lyrics to treasure-hunt you to the finish. ‘No Sweat’s skittering drumlines frame a great pop-punk chorus, and ’THE DRAKE’ is still one of the most intriguing rock singles of the year, the run-on vocal style of Alessia Cara’s ‘Here’ set to moshpit oblivion. When cleopatrick arrive on UK touring shores, there’s going to be carnage. Not everything about ‘BUMMER’ is fully perfected just yet, but there’s plenty to feel upbeat about.