Evans The Death - Evans The Death

Evans The Death waste no time easing you in to their self-titled debut album, opening with ‘Bo Diddley’ and its instantly catchy guitar riffs. The song borrows a little from its namesake, but with Katherine Whitakers’s distinctive vocals it’s clear it’s their own. Lyrically, the album is as intelligent as previous singles would have you believe, with lines like ‘The sun is coming up like a hungover socialite” on ‘Sleeping Song’ being simultaneously witty and slightly, surreally, beautiful. As a young band, Evans The Death wisely choose to write what they know, touching on everything from relationships ending, to how sucky the next generation of kids is, via the fear of getting a job and a nice evening with pizza and box wine.

The fuzzy guitars take a rest for ‘Letter of Complaint’, where Katherine Whitaker’s vocals lose their sultry edge and take on a softer tone, complete with sweet “oohs” in all the right places. But the hooks come straight back with a vengeance with newest single ‘Telling Lies’, another instantly addictive track with a killer guitar solo. Evans The Death have planned the track listing to a T, never overloading the listener with too much at once, and taking time to show the full variety of what they’re capable of. The only problem is that even the routine of fast / slow gets a bit samey; ‘Telling Lies’ is followed up by the lazily crooning ‘Morning Voice’, which takes a while to get going before being replaced by album highlight and presumable fan-favourite ‘Threads’. With its crashing drums and Long Blondes-esque frenetic pop, it’s easy to see why it was their debut single, but it’s also a shame to see it hasn’t really been topped by anything else on the record (although ‘A Small Child Punched Me in the Face’ comes close for its title alone).

Ending on the gorgeously sparse ‘You’re Joking’, Evans The Death’s debut album is full of promise in bitesize two-minute chunks, and we can expect to see more from them in the future.