Doe are laconic, stylish and crowd-pleasing on Grow Into It

Still finding themselves representing a large proportion of gender-inclusive indie, despite being in the great company of bands like Muncie Girls and Fresh, Grow Into It is described by the band as “an antithesis of the overdone trope of male bands singing about rejecting adulthood.” With all the complacency and tongue-in-cheek confrontation of Some Things Last Longer Than You, Doe’s second album exhibits a band enamoured by the intricacies of age partnered with a wiser, and in moments pessimistic, outlook on life. Sonically, this doesn’t mean too much, the three-piece are sticking to a similar formula of brazen indie pop filled to burst with '90s guitar lines found on songs such as “Labour Like I Do” and lyrically-driven earworms like lead-single, “Heated”.

Like most bands, Doe, at times, fall into the trope of going for something ‘bigger’, something more mature, something to play in large rooms with your second album in your pocket as a way of signifying you’re getting better as a band. Luckily, these moments are far and few between with even the singles to push this album avoiding a contemporary route to songwriting, finding comfort in the slightly warped tactic of getting the whole chorus, verse, chorus formality out of the way so they can spend 3 minutes building into an absolute monster of an ending.

Songs like curtain-closer “Here in the Dirt” sound like they could be an early Biffy Clyro b-side with its unpredictable pace, mathy guitar and beautiful exploration of different sounds to eventually reach a riotous crescendo of heavy-handed drumming and grungy distortion.

Laconic and stylish, there’s something extremely appealing about Doe’s musical demeanour. It's no frills, all action, and they manage to create some truly unique moments. The anthem “Team Spirit” is reminiscent of early Courtney Barnett with its oddly timed guitar solos and simplistic singalongs, while still remaining true to the band's core goal with this album - there’s no time to waste.

“I haven’t got time to wait here until I die / It’s not a compromise If I’m not satisfied.” sings Nicola Leel in “But It All Looks The Same”, a song that feels like it is lyrically at the centre of this album’s message. Doe simply don’t have time to listen to the whining, male or female, from those dealing with the inevitability of time. “It’s easy standing still” sing Leel and co-vocalist Jake Popyura over and over again as the song finishes to really drive this point home.

Chunky instrumentation is at the core of every Doe song - it’s what turns this machine into an unstoppable live act and it’s obvious that producer Matthew Johnson (Hookworms, Suburban Home Studio) really wanted to bring this side into the recording process as the truly chaotic moments end up sounding somewhat organised rather than a flurry of ideas being thrust into your ear like certain points in their previous work. Album opener “My Friends” is a storm of distorted guitar lines, dizzy drumming and expertly overlayed vocal lines, orchestrated to immediately demonstrate the sonic diversity of the band.

Now with renowned UK label Big Scary Monsters at the helm, the band are carving out a Doe-shaped slot in the scene for them to fit themselves into. Will Grow Into It surprise fans? No, probably not, but when you have the talent to create hooks like these does it really matter?