Signals: ‘Facial Furniture EP’ [Review]
Fiction
An unbreachable azure haze drifted between them for a moment, and all was lost. The night came. Long, dull, dark, and pitiful. Chilled breezes and aching, empty discomfort.
Slowly, things changed. But not without resistance and friction. When energy builds up, it begins crying out for release. If its wish is granted instantly, the results are negligible; nobody notices. But with anticipation, with more time than seems reasonable, comes something more. Within a person, the abdomen tightens. The gut fizzes. The chest becomes stiff and tense. The shoulders shake, almost imperceptibly. Then the throat….and from there, anything can happen.
Vocal cords vibrate. Minute changes in air pressure convey passions and sweet nothings.
A brief cloud of pink particles solidified within both of their hearts, and the sad blue haze gave in to the inexorable forces of emotional entropy.
Joy and love flooded through them.
They danced. They laughed – hysterical whoops and tearful hiccups. They made love – a stream of impossibly sensual and seductively teasing nights, mornings, and afternoons. He made her breakfast while she poked fun at his facial furniture. They shared sights, smells, sounds, and a multiplicity of other sensations. It felt like it would never end. But it was, as they would later realize during bitter moments of clarity, not built to last.
Signals emerged under harsh fluorescent lights. Slowly, things changed.
Opinion
When a band sends me an album download via Dropbox, I’m instantly forced to at least try to remain objective when listening critically to their work. There are fewer things that bring an online music lover more joy than a bloody good download speed. But fortunately, Signals’ music is fucking fantastic, meaning that what follows is, in fact, my genuine and completely justifiable perspective on their Facial Furniture EP.
I’m going to be honest. I’ve found my new favourite British band. Arcane Roots, Biffy, and Muse have all proven their worth in terms of warped melodic contours and stellar musicianship. But this is something else. Signals have a female vocalist, which makes Paramore and Evanescence comparisons inevitable – and, to be fair, the Paramore comparison fits here. But behind Ellie Price’s pitch-perfect vocal lies a quartet of mind-blowing instrumentalists in the proud but sadly underrated tradition of a legion of South East musicians of years and decades past.
Signals are technical, and their music is so mathy that it yanks me back to the day I sat in front of an A-Level Mathematics exam and experienced such intense, memory-erasing anxiety that I could only just about remember enough information from 18 years of life to spell my name correctly on the cover page. But all of those overly complex equations are employed solely in service of the lyrics and melodies that ice Signals’ rich and moreish musical cake. My personal highlight from this six song set has to be Recuperate – all pristinely clean guitars, finger-snap tightness, stabs that would make Tower of Power and Michael Myers burn with jealousy, and yes, a Paramore-esque nonsense syllable break.
Links follow. Click them, and bask in the awesomeness.
Links / Listen / Buy
Signals. on Facebook and Twitter.
Follow TMMP on Twitter for more awesome music! If you’re a regular reader, thanks for the support! Don’t stop, and keep going!