I’ve listened to ’Mirrowball Stars’ by Acres Wild a couple of times because, as usual, it reminds me of another band, a British one, or perhaps a blend of various British bands but I can’t quite pin it down. At the same time there’s that lush quality about it that you might associate with the Yacht Rock era in the U.S. in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the likes of The Doobie Brothers, Steely Dan, Captain and Tennille and Toto. That goes hand-in-hand with a high production quality, with synths (possibly a mellotron?) gelling nicely with cool jangly guitar.
Acres Wild’s previous single ‘The Sun is Shining’ “conveyed a carefree feeling of an early summer day”, while this follow-up “takes on the melancholia of a late summer night.” I wouldn’t call it melancholic, more like reflective, and it seems to concern the disdain of being alone in a nightclub (the mirrorball reference), surrounded by false bonhomie and loud music while you’d rather be chatting to that special someone who just happens to be out of town tonight. Hey, not the end of the world.
The PR describes the Oslo quintet as drawing inspiration from power pop, post-rock and lo-fi, with which I’d concur but what matters is whether than can deliver a pop song that can hold the average person’s attention span for three minutes and they can do that, by way of a carefully measured track that never gets ahead of itself and ascends delightfully to its conclusion.
Their forthcoming album ‘Appropriate Music’ comes out tomorrow 11th September. Its theme is that “the ‘extraordinary’ can also become extraordinary. Sometimes what you want isn’t the fastest or the loudest, but the appropriate.” Sounds intriguing.
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