Deathcrash – Somersaults

The quarter-life crisis of singer and songwriter Tiernan Banks yields plenty of lines like this on the third album by his band deathcrash. And deathcrash remain – this cannot be said often enough – the strangest and most fascinating of all the bands to emerge from this new wave of British guitar music in and around London.

From the epic 15-minute expanses of their early EPs, through softly clattering slowcore, melancholic guitar songs brushing against emo, and walls of sound that seem liable to collapse at the slightest gust, they now arrive at bittersweet sigh-songs carried above all by Banks’s vocals. The shift was already foreshadowed on his solo record from last year, and in its execution on deathcrash’s third album it feels entirely consistent.

Anyone suddenly thinking of The National during the opener, the title track, can be forgiven. The difference, though, is that no bombast is directing proceedings here. Instead, every song sounds as though it were being played in the smallest rehearsal room in the world for the smallest audience in the world. Intimate music steeped in resignation, from a band that remains so spectacular in quiet ways.