Hexicon - The Blossom Sighs

Here’s the scenario, guys. You’re making a making a mixtape / CD for that girl you like. Currently it’s sounding a little bit like the soundtrack to (500) Days of Summer. Full of sweet indie music, recalling the clear blue skies, infinite hope and pangs of young love. You’ve even put in a cheesy classic in the middle in the hope that your fun side will come through. The trouble is, the compilation that will make her fall in love with you is missing that one track. You want, for it, a song that you know she’ll never have heard, but one that fits in with what you’re trying to say and that will fit in with the vibe that you’ve concocted. Good news then, not only have we found the song that you’re looking for but we’ve found an entire albums worth to pick from, in the form of ‘The Blossom Sighs’, the debut album from Hexicon.

If we’re being rude, and it’s not our intention to be, we would say that Hexicon make music that’s unobtrusive and nice. Which is a horrible thing to say, as they clearly pour themselves into what they do, but it does give you some sort of idea of what to expect when you press play. ‘The Blossom Sighs’ does not go out of its way to engage or challenge the listener, but sweet, immaculate indie-pop does not need to. Listening to the album, and we mean actually listening, makes it impossible not to think of pretty girls in flowery dresses being carefree in fields of long grass. It practically creates the ideal English summer in your brain. Even if the lyrics point towards a different direction, it’s the music that directs.

We can put this down to the vocals being strangely low in the mix. Not inaudible, but perhaps inadvisable for a group operating in such a genre. Think a fuzzier, sweeter Bluetones or a Magic Numbers that allowed their music to breathe rather than attempting to smother it in harmonies. Yes, these are both bands that it’s easy for a certain type of music snob to write off as boring or irrelevant when in actuality it’s a statement of honesty and a display of confident competence. Either way, she”ll like it, and when she returns to the mixtape in a few years time, no matter what else surrounds it, the track that you select off ‘The Blossom Sighs’ will not have aged a day.

If you’re looking for album highlights, we’d recommend previous single ‘Something Strange Beneath The Stars’, ‘She Plays Games’ or closing pair, the lengthy, ‘Follow The Heard’ and ‘Still Hear’. All of which have a great sense of motion throughout and might best be experienced on a train journey through the English countryside. The bad news however, is that although we’ve any of these might be that song that you so desperately need, the chances of this or any mixtape making her fall in love with you is pretty slim. And that’s something we can attest to from experience.