Small Black – New Chain

Kevin Shields’ all-conquering, swooshing guitars with the wind of impending doom in its sails might have been the sound of last year, but 2010 has seen a trend so worrying that, if driven to its logical conlcusion, might erase any initial excitement felt when you first heard Cold Cave with one more hazy, dragged-out drum machine loop. Where in 2009 there was Nu-Gaze, in 2010 there is the equally abysmally named (ugh) Chillwave.

There is no need to go into the specifics of the genre – this has been long ago been done elsewhere – but it needs to be mentioned that Small Black, to all intents and purposes, are chillwave. They started out as a project of two guys noodling around (probably but not necessarily in a bedroom), and their sound is very much in the slightly unclean but not discordant, choppy pop vein of Washed Out. But crucially, Small Black are not a band that makes you want to eat your own eyelids (unlike the odious Neon Indian).

Their eponymous EP was, in fact, a lovely little collection of ramshackle (if inoffensive), slowed-down electro-pop songs and had, in the fantastic ‘Despicable Dogs’, one of the best songs of the spring. What made that song so great – despite having all the by now clichéd properties of the Genre That Must Not Be Named – was that it had a bloody good tune. New Chain, their debut album, does not have many good tunes, but what it has just about enough interesting bits to prevent it from being outright tedious.

For example, there is a tiny synth riff that comes in during ‘Panthers’ which, whilst not being exactly innovative or tricky, meshes together with the layered vocal tracks in a way that just sounds… pleasant. Granted, nothing on this record is especially adventurous, harmony-wise, but there is something intangibly uplifting about this particular moment.

‘Photojournalist’ has some comparatively rousing (don’t hold your breath – they’re pretty low in the mix, as are almost all of the vocals) ‘whoas’ and a drum sample that is recalls Yeasayer’s triumphant Odd Blood in its meaty, unashamed 80s-ness.

As a collection of songs, New Chain is a fairly monotonous, if easy on the ear, affair. As a sonic carpet to roll out underneath those long and cold autumn evenings, it will work a treat.