Review: These Fading Polaroids – ‘The Get Down EP (Pt.1)

Powering in with their latest release, These Fading Polaroid’s swerve between playing hard and fast or slow and tender.

The Edinburgh four-piece are now entering their third year, with this double A-side continuing the momentum and sound they have developed after gigging across the country.

‘A Caved In Mind’ has a violent finesse to it, opening with relaxed snares and tracked vocals before exploding with an expansive guitar solo that comes drenched in exuberance and effects. The chorus proper spirals in a series of duelling vocals and high end guitars before settling down like the sea after a storm.

 ‘Keep Your Promises’ is cut from a similar cloth as ‘A Caved In Mind’, sounding somewhat drawl before more vibrant guitar playing lifts the tempo. It stops and starts, before kicking up a gear with a culminating explosion of sound. Tom Exton’s drumming keeps the song anchored in reality whilst Andy Gregory’s vocals soar, proclaiming “It’s that feeling I hate the most/Clinging on to something/That might as well be a ghost”.

This double A-side reaches for the poignant side of alternative rock and gets most of the way there. Leo Bargery’s guitar playing gives the two songs an extra layer of expansiveness, helping to raise These Fading Polaroid’s sound up above many of their local contemporaries. Playing with the striking vigour of a supercharged engine, there’s definitely plenty more where this came from.

‘A Caved In Mind’ and ‘Keep Your Promises’  are available on Spotify and Bandcamp now:
http://thesefadingpolaroids.bandcamp.com/