The Recommender

When you’re taking a look ahead to where popular music might be going it sometimes helps to understand where it’s come from. This way you can begin to recognise patterns and influences as they appear. The difficult trick for any modern magpies is to successfully blend the old ideas with some new ones.

The future of music isn’t decided by those that attack the past, pillaging it of it’s best bits, re-packaging it and then re-selling it to innocent punters. Regurgitating a Michelin starred meal will not a chef make you. There’s plenty of admirable examples of this activity, particularly with this style of giant, guitar-based music – just look at how successful the new Horrors album is, and we’ve seen it again more recently with the potential inside Duologue.

Fractures are very new four piece from London, forming just a few months ago. They’re at the unfinished demo stage, (having only completed their first gigs in June), but they’ve informed The Recommender that they’re currently in the process of recording their debut single. The influences jump out at you so regularly you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s Halloween. From the few demo’s currently available on their Soundcloud they tip toe through most of the 90s guitar-based indie.

As we know the Britpop of that era was very reflective itself, looking to the Beatles of the 60s and T-Rex of the 70s, which is what you therefore get with Fractures by proxy. However, it’s the strident 90s power indie that dominates. It’s a trick that was successfully repeated by Kasabian in recent years, with massive choruses, wide open power chords and a constant ear on the melody. Their thumping track, Alone, will earn them lots comparisons to Supergrass, in the best possible way, and although it floats close to the post punk of the 80s you soon reach Fred Murray’s excellent vocals which sound like they’re backing themselves in layers, particularly in the chorus, somewhat like Ray Davies used to.

Elsewhere we get Sunshine which contains the echoing rumble of Suede, which is only confounded when Murray reaches the chorus in a style that makes it impossible not to picture Brett Anderson. Perhaps the strongest of the demos to date – although they’re all contenders – is the track, Ride, but like the others it too is in need of polishing. It has their trademark banging guitars, with Matt Gwyer providing a dancing lead over Harry Adams punchy riffing. It’s the chorus that’s made for the biggest of stages though. Pick your stadium lads.

The road that trends take is sometimes best viewed by staring in the rearview mirror of music’s past. Just like your car mirrors you have to gain a certain amount of distance between you and the most recent objects before they come into view. Fractures are tapping into a kind of 90s music that has started to emerge more and more in recent months. The mid-90s are now far enough away for the youth of today to consider them a by-gone era which is ripe for the picking. Where Fractures succeed so well is by selecting their influences with panache, but the secret to a truly successful future is if they bring some new ideas to the sound. (MB)

FRACTURES – ALONE

FRACTURES – SUNSHINE