Union Sound Set - Start / Stop

2010 seems to have become the year of the grower. The album that doesn’t slam your brain with audio goodness, but slowly seeps into your mind, refusing to let you go. Case in point: ‘High Violet’. The eerie spectacle of an album helped The National ditch their unfortunate best kept secret tag and saw their music actually crack the previously unassailable heights of that mythical creature; the chart.

Similarly, Union Sound Set, reassembled like Frankenstein from the ashes of UK shoe-gazers Prego, have produced an album that shares that rarest of qualities. To go over what makes a grower would be redundant, Union Sound Set know what makes an album go from an interesting listen to a minor obsession and have a taken a fair crack at it.

One of the most arresting tracks on ‘Start / Stop’ also happens to be its first. ‘My Current State (Is Your Latest Objective)’ starts off all naval-gazing and blissed out, like the haze from the summer slowly drifting into your ears. But, by the end of its running time, the track has morphed to a rousing and manic ending. Everything collides in the kind of beautiful show gaze mess that doesn’t give you a chance to come down. In between all of us, lead singer Edd drawls ‘Wait for the landslide’ in a suitably epic manner. It may seem like an obtuse opener, but it’s quite an effective showcase of the band’s ability to transform songs in a heartbeat.

Then the pace of this dies away. Simply, the middle section of the album that is frustrating, with there being three songs that destroy the pacing of the album. If the majority of the album is quite hooky in a low key fashion, ‘Here’s To You’ slows the pace down until sheer boredom has kicked in. What could have been jolting becomes indulgent. Following this with other meandering tracks, that are best saved for the floor, divorces the album from its pace and its purpose.

‘Hiding Places’, coming after this dry spell, is, fortunately, the standout track on the album. It takes all of five seconds to get under your skin and then all of ten seconds to worm its way into your heart. It’s even easy to ignore the choir bellowing in the background (think Bloc Party’s ‘SXRT’… in fact just think Bloc Party) as the song ploughs through to the chorus. They have a direct line to epic, but that doesn’t mean the odd simple blast of guitars, drums and hooks in a way that screams ‘You should be bellowing like a burke to the lyrics right now’ isn’t appreciated.

If anything ‘Hiding Places’ seems to give the album a sense of life. Answers builds to an insistent beat, whereas ‘The Longest Calm’ is joyful, Edd’s voice pierces the atmosphere expertly, with an understated ‘Can you answer… Can you speak?’ However, all of these songs seem to share the same structure. Start small, build-up to a large chorus, rinse lather repeat. The same trick loses its lustre as the album draws to its close, with thoughts of Snow Patrol and their MOR vehicle of song writing clearly rearing its foul head.

The album’s hidden track – let the silence at ‘Waiting Minds’ die out – is worth the dead air, as it gives a glimpse of the band experimenting with simpler ideas. Take a two-minute epilogue and sprinkle with some acoustic love and you’ve got a fitting climax.

The name change from Prego, a lot of re-used material… There could have been a lot of issues that should’ve changed the context of the album. Instead, here is a debut album that doesn’t come bolted with hype and / or scandal. They’re a genuinely promising British band, with a genuinely promising album. Comparisons between UK acts like Bloc Party, with their early sharp as tack guitars influencing a lot of the album, will be chucked all over the place. So will accusations of bombast. Despite odd miss-steps that bog the middle section of the album, it’s more than the sum of its parts and quite clearly deserves your time.