Frankenstein Bolts

Perhaps we should have Frankenstein Bolt’s main man Justin Cullen predict the weather for the Irish summer. If his weather prediction is anything like the music he conjures, we could look forward to a lush, warm hazy summer. Frankenstein Bolt’s debut album ‘Slow Season’ would be that summer, with only a few showers along the way.

In the age of digital streaming, media stats have shown that the first track has to be immediate enough to ensure the listener is hooked rather than losing them to other distracting tasks such as pulling fluff out of your navel. When that track is Sleeping Sacks, you are on to a winner. A gorgeous whisp of a song that floats and dances, it could be mistaken as a song from Beach House, if they had relocated to Wexford. It’s sumptuously produced and encapsulates all that is good about Frankenstein Bolts.

There’s time to slouch in the hammock as To Make The Sunlight Thin and Love Of Sailing are gentle waves of dream folk/pop lapping at your consciousness. Both songs are sedate and this is a theme which carries forward. Other highlights include Frankenstein Bolts with its ear-worm chorus of “this won’t last forever/this won’t last a day” and Cusp. The latter has a lightness that feels reminiscent of The Lightning Seeds.

The one criticism that can be levelled at ‘Slow Season’ is that over the course it is all too similar and it does begin to drift off aimlessly. Some of the songs such as Alone Ranger are fine standalone songs but in the context of other tracks feel too much like a carbon copy of what has gone before. It really requires more substantial changes in tone or pace to keep it fresh. Nevertheless this is a promising album with some standout tracks that fully deserve your attention.