Cold Crows Dead – I Fear A New World

‘We’ve got a theremin, and we’re gonna use it’. While probably not how Brighton housemates Murray Macleod (The Xcerts) and Paul Steel (late-00s keyboard warrior) decided to embark upon ‘I Fear A New World’, their debut album together as Cold Crows Dead, it works all the same.

There’s an odd contradiction throughout the record. The ostensibly ‘better’ songs, where Steel’s songwriting prowess and Macleod’s strongly accented vocals mix to their most powerful – are, bluntly, a bit dull. ‘Scarred and Thoughtless’, a largely piano-based ballad manages to last four and a half minutes with nothing much happening at all, and yet still sounds like an X Factor winner’s single. ‘Gone’, with its odd glitches and weird vocal effects, closer ‘Devil’s Won’, they’re undoubtedly accomplished, but to their detriment.

And on the flip-side, comes the cheese. ‘Deadheads’, with its 80s rock guitar solo and numerous key changes; the near-comical rock break-down of ‘My Shovel’. Just how serious a project is this? The higher up the scale one goes, the more baffling the results.

So let’s assume it’s the pair playing; the amount of oddball studio japes featured suggests as much: the croaking backing vocals of opener ‘Ghost That Burned Your House Down’ and ‘Deadheads’, the sparkle of ‘Killer Party’, the fact that just about every song on this December release features either xylophones, sleigh bells, strings or – in the case of ‘Scarred and Thoughtless’ – choral backing. And who could pair the hook “since my baby took her life / I’ve found it hard to sleep” with such jolly instrumentation without tongue firmly in cheek?

Whether anyone listening to ‘I Fear A New World’ enjoys the record therefore seems pretty much moot – this is so over-the-top Cold Crows Dead’s studio sessions must’ve been a hoot.