Kill The Waves

The One That Could Have Been

(Bloc+Music)

In an ideal world, Kill The Waves' single Better Days would be playing just about every time you turned on the radio. But given that the Glasgow-based six-piece have released their debut album on the local Bloc+Music label and that they made their first T in the Park appearance last summer on the T Break stage, perhaps that's jumping the gun a bit.

Fingers crossed, however, that this digital-release album, despite its rather defeatist title, gains them wider exposure because if it's possible to push back genre boundaries while operating securely within a listener-friendly electro alt-pop formula, that's exactly what Kill The Waves are doing.

The band themselves namecheck Four Tet for the "glitchy rhythms" and Arcade Fire for the "unashamedly soulful songwriting" and, sure enough, sometimes the edges of their songs are brittle and sometimes the tunes are abundant.

Often it's John Luke Treadgold's propulsive drumming as much as his bandmates' fleet fingers on the keyboards that brings on a dynamic dancefloor rush, even as Tim Kwant's vocals take a Thom Yorke approach to slipping in behind the beat. The unexpected element that gives the music its heart, however, is Heather Thikey's violin, an organic green shoot even in the coldest electronic landscape.

Alan Morrison