Last Updated on December 16, 2023
I had to check my stereo settings when I hit the ‘play’ button on the first track of this album. It’s got almost no mid or bottom end. I even checked it with my studio headphones. As an aesthetic choice, it’s interesting. I’m pleased to note that despite there being less low end than an orbiting satellite, the bass guitar can still clearly be heard in the mix. But I would say that. What with being a bassist myself.
There were a few years in the early 2000s when starting songs ‘thin’ like this was de rigueur for many (mostly punk) bands. So I spent the first few tracks of this album waiting for it to thicken up and blow my ears off suddenly.
You may think I’m focussing too much on the lo-fi aesthetic of Sweeping Promises too much. But as someone who adores Black Metal, this is a style I’m very familiar with. There’s a style of Black Metal called ‘KVLT’ that has a reedy sound similar to the one Sweeping Promises have on ‘Good living is coming for you’. The type of Black Metal I chose not to listen to.
The band claims to record using a ‘single mic’ technique. As a sound engineer, I’m not sure I believe, but it does explain the sound. As an aside, if they really are using just one microphone, they are gods of mic placement!
But enough about the choices made in the recording studio, I’ll listen past the tissue box mastering and concentrate on the songs. At least with a sound like this, I won’t be getting any noise complaints from my neighbours.
Sweeping Promises has a female vocalist with a voice that is beautifully under control and works wonderfully as a texture, which is assertive but not over-domineering. I’ve deliberately not looked up the biography for this band, but I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that whoever is proving the second vocal is related to the owner of the first. They sound great together.
The bass, drums, guitar, and an occasional synth, complement each other really well. Not just in sound but in the playful way they bounce of each other. Sweeping Promises is firmly in the realm of post-punk, but unlike a lot of bands swanning around this genre, the band doesn’t sound like a stale pastiche of everything that has come before them.
I’m going to regret this, and I promise to feel bad for at least three days, but I’m going to describe Sweeping Promises as ‘charming’. There, I said it, I’m sorry.
Charming music can sound cloying and twee by the time an album is at the half-time oranges stage. But despite the songs of ‘Good living is coming for you’ being undeniably similar in shape and tone, they never wander into tweeness.
There are some lovely riffs that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Metronomy album, or in a track that Pete Shelley might have written while in a whimsical mood.
A good way to gauge how I feel about an album is to ponder how I feel when the last track has finished. By the time the final track ‘Ideal No’ abruptly naffs off I feel a bit like I’ve made a new friend at a gig. But that friend has gone off to the bar and not come back. Make of that what you will.
