Static Dress - Rouge Carpet Disaster

Having already enchanted the underground with their darkly futuristic alt rock and immersive visual universe, Leeds’ Static Dress are announcing themselves to the rest of the world as British rock’s brave new hope; this debut offers to carry the torch that My Chemical Romance once led their black parade with. Comparisons to ‘Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge’ will easily abound, but rather than letting their influences overwhelm their identity, Static Dress are bouncing off them into their own brand of emo gold. It’s darker, leaner, sexier and - at points - a lot heavier, with ‘Lye Solution’ and ‘Courtney, just relax’ exploding in a cloud of world-ending noise. At the other end of the spectrum, they make beautiful things out of softer sounds with the twinkling twilight balladry of ‘Attempt 8’ and quietly blossoming epic ‘Marisol’, and it becomes almost impossible to believe that this is only a debut album when this band sounds like they’ve known themselves their whole lives. If there’s any shred of justice in the world, this is going to be a future emo classic – and it’s fully deserving of it.