The Cords - The Cords

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Like all great pop bands, The Cords have taken familiar ingredients and created something utterly fresh. Older indie fans will hear echoes of The Shop Assistants, The Primitives, T iger Trap and Talulah Gosh, but they will hear something else too: a yearning, dreamy melodic power that takes the songs into darker, stranger places. Younger pop fans won’t care about these old reference points: what they will hear is the sound of two young women doing something utterly exciting: playing loud guitar and loud drums, taking analogue instruments and hitting them hard in the service of immediate and infectious pop tunes, and not giving a second thought about the digital world that wants to own everything we do. The Cords sound free: they remind us that pop music, played right, is expressive, liberating, joyful and deeply personal. First single, ‘Fabulist’, is a sweet and catchy pop song that races along, so headlong and hooky that, on first listen, you could miss the fact that it’s a wholehearted take-down of people who lie for a living. And the album is a rollercoaster from that point onwards. ‘Just Don’t Know (How To Be You)’ turns the jangle-meter up, quickly giving way to ‘October’, which pushes it higher still. A lot of the songs are short and sweet, but the album is full of surprises. ‘Yes It’s True’ comes in with real swagger, then softens you up with Lush-like vocal harmonies. Closing track ‘When You Said Goodbye’ is a dreamy tearjerker. The album was produced by Jonny Scott and Simon Liddel, and it respects the band’s stripped down DIY approach. There is some bass guitar (played by Eva and Grace) and occasionally a keyboard pokes its head above the surface. But these elements are simply doing their job: the real stars of this record are Eva’s sinuous guitar and silky vocals, and Grace’s clattering, expressive sing-song drums. It’s the sound of two sisters having an intense musical conversation with each other, pushing each other on to greater heights, exhilarated by the set of perfect pop songs they have magicked up. Show more