SPLASHH

COMFORT (Luv Luv Luv)

15/20

Social media consistently devours music, grinding it up with its terrifyingly authoritative fangs. Bands are having to invent themselves around Twitter trends and Tumblr tags, fashioning fur coats and dip-dye hair in an embarrassing attempt to qualify for every hashtag going. Floppy-haired youths, blinded by their fringes, are failing to separate the honourable bands in this ghastly flurry .

Delicately breaking through with the release of All I Wanna Do via the incredibly innovative label Art Is Hard, Splashh, unlike most social-media orientated bands, began their venture in the most authentic way possible. Despite there only ever being one physical release of the pizza-box enclosed 7”, it was enough to catapult the single into the eardrums of every relevant blogger, seeing the band grace the pages of Vogue merely weeks later.

Nevertheless, the unexpected fame saw little faith in their debut. There were sneers and suspicion that Splashh’s distinct sound would get lost amongst the ego and label demands. Moreover, the band are burdened with their alluring appearance; a quality that undeniably gains fans yet raises the brows of music critics forced to detect whether there is more to the hype than chiselled jaws and seductive smiles.

Fortunately, Splashh have managed to protrude from the posers by simply writing songs as dense and engaging as Vacation. Overlooking the exhausted title, the song fluctuates abruptly between salient melodies and silky sonorities, harvesting the crest of the album merely four songs in.

Each song carries a familiar ambience rendered through harmonic tones. So Young‘s frantic drums and piercing wails lends itself to surf-rock comparisons, but through grunge-soaked opener Headspins and Feels Like You‘s atmospheric psychedelia, the album favourably diverges from genre to genre whilst pursuing their head-bobbing shoegaze throughout.

Comfort‘s acclamation is purely formed from its heterogeneity,  proving cynics are drowning under the mass of fur coats and neglecting a charming album.

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Words: Ayesha Linton-Whittle