Review By Ross Maguire
When we think of the type of music that’s emerging strong in the Irish music scene at the moment, it’s fair to say that with bands like Adebisi Shank, Enemies and The Redneck Manifesto, Alternative/Math Rock is bursting at the seams. You could say then that a band like Wicklow based Croupier have a lot to live up to. Well with their 6 track E.P “We, The System”, they certainly don’t disappoint.
The first track on the E.P, “It’s Not The T.V, It’s The Remote”, opens the record up with a chiming guitar melody backed by a groovy drum beat, which puts you in an ambient trance before the Robert Smith-like vocals overlay this with the repeated line “straight to my room/invest in truth” .The song ends with an intense and heavy guitar filled chorus with the line “feels like I’m old” emotionally fired from singer Charlie Mooney’s vocals chords, and leaves you hoping that the rest of this record can follow suit just as good.
That it does with second track “Amphitheatre”. This time the listener is greeted with some beautiful piano and acoustic chord rings, and you can’t help but feel these guys can really play. The song ends with some heavy instrumental work, notably the drums which leave you wondering if drummer Niall O’Kelly survived after the recording of this songs outro.
The songs “Fresh Milk” and “Decades” have an ASIWYFA feel to them and take the record a step further with some heavy guitars and vocals the whole way through. The penultimate track “100 times” brings it back to earth but at the same time sends you to a different place. “100 times” contains some electronic drum sounds and some high pitched vocal work making this track a salute to Radiohead’s “idioteque”. This is before it breaks into an explosive wave of instrument bashing, filled with Spartan- like chanting from all band members with the words “I could see you”, which would be sure to get the crowd going at any gig.
The record ends with the soft piano work of Harry Burton on “Third Tier”. A soft vocal melody and drum beat take you down after an emotional an energetic ride through Croupier’s must have first E.P.
“We, the system” will certainly leave you gagging to see these guys live, and with this type of music scene growing fast don’t be surprised to see Croupier moving on to bigger and better things in the very near future.
Download “We, the system” for free here: Croupier Bandcamp