Spotlight Kid - Disaster Tourist

Nottingham six-piece Spotlight Kid follow up their 2006 LP ‘Departure’ and 2010 EP ‘Crystal Dreams’ with ‘Disaster Tourist’, an 11-track record that throws the listener back to early-90s shoegaze.

Chris Davis, of Six By Seven drummer fame, joins former Bent vocalist Katty Heath in delivering a record that does the musical equivalent of wrapping its arms around your body and giving you a nice, warm hug. Rather like that Batchelors Cup-A-Soup advert, minus the shaggy blue fur. And the soup, of course. Which is strange thing to say when you dismantle the elements of shoegaze, the most prominent of which is its wall of guitars, drowning out a song’s vocals until they’re nothing more than echoes emanating from the depths of a cave. This doesn’t do much for those who want to lip-synch along to a tune, but for those of us who want to jump inside a melody, Spotlight Kid’s ‘Disaster Tourist’ is your boarding point.

Stand-out tracks ‘April’ and ‘Creeps’ drum up comforting images of watching the sun rise atop a hill wrapped in a blanket, while acoustic track ‘Lifeline’ is perfect for morning-after-the-night-before listening. Kitty’s vocals emphasise the reason why some of us fell in love with this genre in the 90s, her sweet tones entwining themselves around our heartstrings to create a three-minute track that’s not just a listening experience; this album’s trying to revive a genre, people!