‘Dream Mover’ is the brand new release from Dublin rockers The Hot Sprockets and is an album that, upon reaching its high-points, will have the listener floating on a psychedelic plane and bopping along to its infectious melodies.

Thanks to its reverberated guitar riffs and impressively tight harmonies, Right Spots kicks off the record in just the right way, indicating that the Sprockets are back with a bang. Dead Still Ride offers a more vivid experience combining striking falsetto vocals and ephemeral lyrics such as “Nothing’s clear just a beautiful haze.”  

Like these lyrics, much of the lyricism found throughout the album is a step up from the band’s previous contributions, which didn’t always satisfy. Apart from Way With Women, which quite disappointingly, sees the standard of the lyrics dip significantly with its predictable content, the song-writing on this record is pretty consistent and proves the band are capable of conveying some unique perspectives in their writing – “Am I too young to change?” asks the lyrics in Ruby Shoes.

This is a record that certainly features some dramatic, albeit interesting, stylistic transitions. So Low sees a shift to a more laid-back tone with darker tinged lyrics – “I’m in a mood so low and I’m not gonna give it up.” This is probably as Radiohead-esque as The Hot Sprockets are ever likely to get and it’s a huge drop – not in standards but in a literal sense – from the previous song, ‘Imagine Us On The Sun,’ a carefree track about floating in the sky.

“It’s a whimsical street hustlin’ world,” declare the band on the album’s standout moment, Cold Cold Sweat, which coupled with brass is inspired by the Afro-beat rhythms of Fela Kuti. It’s a more percussive sound to be sure, yet this groovy number never fails to deliver the classic rock’n’roll style that The Sprockets are known for.

This track, like much of the record, highlights how it’s not just the song-writing that The Sprockets have improved on, but that the entire production heard throughout is noticeably more professional, with both the instrumentation and vocals sounding much more proficient than what’s been released from the band previously.

Succeeding in keeping its stride with some well-calculated changes in style that prove there is more than one side to The Hot Sprockets, ‘Dream Mover’ is another solid album from the band. This record contains everything the band are already renowned for, yet adds in  more of those earthier, soulful, psychedelic elements that prove The Sprockets are making an effort to progress with their sound. It would be interesting to see some further or more noticeable experimentation in the future.