Following on from precursors THE HAIR, CLUB SMITH's outstanding talent is to have taken a distinctive white soul approach to danceable pop music, then intensified it and strengthened it with every new release. New levels have become the norm. This EP is just three months after the last - and each of the four tracks is an advance on the best of the last batch. Every one a killer. The sound is big and bluesy. The power of Sam Robson's voice gets a good deep mix with plenty of band sound and the crescendos rattle windows on the other side of town. The production, like the songs, gets fuller and more detailed, with no loss of the original raw feel.
"The Green Room", "Causing Doubt", "Do You Despair" and "The Young Defeatist" sound like dismalist indie titles. But I did say that this was a soul record, and the deeper swell of optimistic excitement gives the whole EP an urgency that ends up being positive and celebratory. Time to dance, not time to cry, even though (as he sings) "We haven't got a leg to stand on".
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So far unaligned and undarlinged, Club Smith can’t count on automatic entry to anyone else's club. But on the strength of the two EPs this Spring, it hardly matters. They're big enough, prolific enough and hard enough to build their own.
www.clubsmith.co.uk
www.allsortedrecords.com
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