If someone handed you a CD and told you it was made by an offshoot of frightening rawk beasts The Icarus Line, what would you expect it to sound like? Like the sort of thing the CIA plays a terrorists to make them confess their crimes, probably.
And you'd be wrong, because that Icarus Line offshoot is As Templar Nites by Souls She Said, and – thankfully – it's a whistlestop, nine-track, 25-minute tour of the most scuzzily exciting places in danceable vaguely art rock indie around. And that means As Templar Nites by Souls She Said sounds like every band you've ever liked, you lucky beggars.
Musical offshoots are never usually much fun, since they usually revolve around a band's bassist deciding that releasing The Greatest Hits Of 5ive Played On The Laser-Lute is the only way that he can express the musicianship that dwells inside him. So we're going to be eternally grateful to Joe Cardomone and Don Devore from The Icarus Line for making As Templar Nites by Souls She Said not just listenable but even better than the music they make in their day job too.
Where The Icarus Line make music that make you want to tear the throat out of anyone within thrashing distance, Souls She Said just make you want to get down, and that's clear from the outset – Sunken City comes across like a heavier New Order, covered in Nightclubbing-style blips and bleeps and a beat that just won't quit. In one fell swoop it makes the new album by The Rapture entirely redundant, and it's not often we get to say that. Floor On The Floor carries this mood on, even daring to chuck in a few shouts of "everybody get on the floor" and, unbelievably, getting away with it.
However, when Souls She Said deviate from the formula, you get the impression that As Templar Nites was conceived in a haze of "let's do a song that sounds like…" conversations, which would be a problem if Souls She Said didn't pull off their more transparently derivative songs with such flair. Riverbloat is the great song Sonic Youth never wrote, Tastefaker is pitch-perfect Make Up and if Souls She Said weren't listening solidly to Slanted And Enchanted before they went and recorded Distralia then we'd be very surprised.
So that's As Templar Nites by Souls She Said, then – and if you can find a more furiously breakneck 25-minute album, be sure to let us know, because it'll have to be something really special to top this album.
Now buy As Templar Nites by Souls She Said at Amazon
[story by Stuart Heritage]