Give ‘Now or Never’ an initial spin, and you might come away thinking, yes, a pretty cool indie track. Go again, and you pick up that it feels quintessentially English-sounding, understandable for a band from High Wycombe. A third spin and you get sucked into its anthemic qualities. The fourth time around, you pick up the clever, varied guitar textures cocooned within the song’s bigger sound. Play it a fifth time, and you realise that you have completely fallen for this poised and powerful, anthemic and very much English, or at least British, slice of stadium-ready indie.
But that gets to the heart of how you should listen to music, and how long it takes to fully embrace a song. First impressions might be cool, but stay in the zone and dig deeper, and you’ll always find a lot more to get out of the experience.
There is something of the 2000s guitar revival going on here, a touch of Arctic Monkeys’ energy, some of The Strokes’ ragged and inspired, garage band sound, but there is also a glimpse of indie-rock future at work here. Indie might be a slowly evolving genre, often as stuck in its traditions and comfort zones as rock music is, but here is the sound of things moving on.
The guitars run between chiming finesse and incendiary power; the depth-charge bass and driving backbeat pummel and propel; the vocals are accessible; the words are wonderfully sing-along-able; and there is just enough dynamic and sonic mutability to keep things interesting.
I’m not saying Broken Colours are the face of forward-thinking indie, a signpost towards where things go next for the genre, but… err… no, I am saying that. Exactly that!
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