As they gear up to release their debut album, Here’s To Pretending, due in a couple of weeks, London indie kids French Dogs give us their darkest single yet. They have always been masters of delivering heavy guitar grooves, riffs that often tip over into more rock-and-roll realms, but with “Broken Glass”, they certainly hit a deeper, more intense sonic seam.
And this time out, it is less through volume and velocity that they make their mark, rather through a brooding understatement and the song’s smart musical dynamic, as if they have kept true to the indie ethic but poured their usual punk-inspired energies into more gothic sensibilities. Imagine the Libertines playing music to match their cold come down, or Arctic Monkeys having picked up a penchant for Darkwave sonics.
But this slight meander from their more expected charging indie anthem sound proves that, with their first album not even cold, they are already setting a template for adventurous, genre-hopping music, or put another way, intelligent indie music. But more than that, the sound serves the sentiment of the song, a soundtrack to the dedication and desire to find a better life, the resolve to do anything, to metaphorically walk over the titular broken glass, to break free, to find happiness, to realise those dreams.
This latest single is not only a great blending of indie traditions and a blinding flash of modernity, the sound of the genre moving with the times, but it is also the latest in a string of great songs, songs that will make any and all discerning music fans hand over their money as soon as the longer player is available.
