Amber

Hometown: London/Nottingham
Lineup: Will Jones, Tom Sperring, Josh Keogh, Henry Wyeth and Felix Archer
For fans of: To Kill A King, Noah & The Whale, Imogen Heap
Key tracks: ‘Kites’, ‘Noah’
See him live: The Bodega, Nottingham, 10 October
Connect: Facebook | SoundCloud | Twitter | YouTube

London via Nottingham University quintet Amber are the latest to follow in the footsteps of Blur, Suede, The Chemical Brothers and countless others who have come good honing their craft while bored and skint between university lectures.

Their breakthrough, of sorts, was a cute indie-pop cover of Imogen Heap’s vocoded tear-jerker turned X Factor bootcamp fodder, ‘Hide & Seek‘. On the surface, these chaps risk walking a tightrope between the dreaded Mumford’s stadium-shafting folk-cock-rock and the less contemptuous of the whimsical, agriculturally fixated class of 2008/09; Noah & The Whale, Stornoway et al. Scrape away at their almost too poised and preened patina though and you actually reveal some more incisive, mature sensibilities in the title-track from their debut EP, Noah, and better-still recent teaser, ‘Kites’.

The latter song in particular exposes their potential for growth, their oldest member is a tender 20-years-old, ‘Kites’ is a slow-burning, angst-driven waltz pumped full of twinkly yawning guitar lines and daintily repeating keys. There’s even room for some bruising male-female harmonies in the rising chorus, a marked change of pace from the more direct ”Noah’s haughty religious symbolism, tumbling piano sequences and chiming idiophones, which pushes them closer to The National and To Kill A King’s sinewy orchestral rock territory. Points for referencing Andy Dufresne’s iconic “get busy living or get busy dying” quote from that pivotal scene in Shawshank in the triumphant refrain too. Keep an eye out for this promising lot.

The Noah EP is out on 22 July.