White Noise Sound - White Noise Sound

(Alive Natural Sound Records, 2011)

Swansea-based six-piece White Noise Sound’s eponymous debut album starts promisingly with opening track ‘Sunset’, which rolls along like early Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, while ‘Blood’s repetitive riff and electronic flourishes sounds like …Come Down-era Dandy Warhols. ‘There Is No Tomorrow’ is reminiscent of the Verve with its layered, illuminating guitars and distant, paranoid vocal. Album closer ‘(In Both) Dreams & Ecstasies’ builds to a lovely, hypnotic climax which would do Gomez proud. One of the drawbacks of WNS is that they have a habit of getting locked into a groove they can’t get out of. Indeed, ‘Blood’ is apparently so groovy that it leaves an eight-minute reprise in its wake. The album flows like a series of ungodly nights out and soundtracks the comedowns that inevitably follow and this is where some of the album’s flaws can be found. At their best WNS combine the reverb-heavy vocals of My Bloody Valentine with the buzzing, triumphant guitars of BRMC and if they lose some of the long, meandering instrumental sections they’ll soon be a force to reckon with.