Kodaline
In A Perfect World
June 17 2013 (RCA)
9/10
Words: Dave Beech
When a band such as Dublin's Kodaline comes along, I view them with a mixture of both awe and sympathy; the former because of the sheer amount of talent and chemistry upheld by the band members, and the latter because too many times the hype bubble bursts and sends those it once enveloped crashing back to reality, rapidly. Thankfully, for singer Steve Garrigan et al, they've been playing as a single entity for six years now (though only under the Kodaline moniker for two) and that experience helps massively when recording of début album...perhaps someone should have told Palma Violets that.
Similarly to Palma Violets, the band were short-listed for the BBC's Sound of 2013, along side bands such as Chrvches and Savages, unlike the aforementioned Palma Violets however, Kodaline's début 'In A Perfect World' is a fully realised and majestic record that drips with grandeur and hits home with almost every single track.
Album opener 'One Day' sets the standard for what's to follow really quite high whilst epitomising just exactly what it is that 'In A Perfect World' is about: anthemic, optimistic radio-friendly indie-pop that keeps it's footing miraculously well on the slippery slope of stadium-sized balladry, only once losing it's footing to an unnecessary stumble in the form of 'Talk', one of the latter tracks from the album that doesn't live up to what precedes, nor what follows.
The first two singles to come from the album are 'High Hopes' and 'Love Like This' respectively both of which hold their own easily amongst the rest of the album, particularly 'Love Like This' in which folk-inspired, semi-acoustic aesthetics are punctuated by some fantastic harmonica work and backing harmonies. This is what a band sounds like when it's having fun.
While the whole of 'In A Perfect World' is an impressively optimistic and liberating record, it's the latter half in which you can really understand and appreciate the sheer sustainability of a band like a Kodaline. With the exception of the aforementioned 'Talk' the last five songs on the album are, quite simply, superb: 'Big Bad World' is indicative of a synth-drenched We Are Augustines whilst 'All Comes Down To' is a Graceland-inspired romp, back-boned by a staccato synth and fleshed out by an emphatic gospel quire that reaches the dizzying heights never-achieved by Tribes on 'Wish to Scream'. The title of Most Interesting Song, however, falls easily at the feet of the penultimate 'Pray'. Coming after the whitewash that was 'Talk', 'Prey' is a claustrophobic and imposing anthem, that's conversely, almost entirely in a minor key. Dark and brooding, the song's only form of optimism comes in the form of Garrigan's vocals that work in tandem with a piano, juxtaposing themselves against the bleak outlook that forms the rest of the song.
'In A Perfect World' is going to be a huge album that much is clear. It's already is a huge album in it's ambition and it will undoubtedly secure Kodaline as one of the biggest bands of 2013. They're Snow Patrol with smiles, Coldplay with personality, Mumford & Sons without a banjo. They're everything the hype purported them to be and more. Kodaline are going to be massive.
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