Album Review :: Trampolene - Swansea To Hornsey

Album

Trampolene

Swansea To Hornsey

October 27 2017 (Mi7 Records) 

8/10

Words: Richard Cobb

One of my favourite films of all time is Submarine. A film based on a book centred on a young Welsh teenager dealing with growing up in a small town whilst seeing the world through what seemed like a hilarious yet agonisingly awkward telescope.

The opening track of Swansea rockers Trampolene’s debut album, 'Artwork of Youth', provides a similarly awkward and brutally honest account of the teenage years through spoken word, with singer Jack Jones (who also co-produced the album at Ray Davies’ Konk Studios in London’s Muswell Hill - the ‘Hornsey’ of the title - with Josh Green) the protagonist in this cautionary tale. It’s one of the boldest opening’s to a debut album I can remember and it paves the way for what’s to follow, acting almost as a trailer for the theme of the next 13 tracks.

‘Imagine Something Yesterday’ introduces the rest of the band, with a cocktail of shimmering guitar lines and a good few carefully crafted “oooh” harmonies thrown into the mix which never fail on a track like this. Things get a bit more complex on former single ‘Alcohol Kiss’. There’s a frantic pace to this one, and an air of Miles Kane to this track with its swagger, energy and delivery. It gives a good account of the band’s technical talents as it’s no straightforward guitar song. In fact, if this song was on Guitar Hero, I’d probably get booed off about four seconds in on easy mode for my god awful attempt at trying to play along.

Time for another spoken word, this time in the form of ‘Ketamine.’  Jones here delivers like a young, if a little more sleepy, John Cooper Clarke. As the title suggests, it’s the sort of thing you’d expect to overhear in the early hours of the morning in a pub somewhere, where everyone but the dog in the corner are out of their minds, or at the back of the techy class amongst three giggling glue sniffing classmates who are fashioning a pipe out of a piece of wood instead of a spatula.

‘You Do Nothing for Me’ is a thrill; the drums sound great here, as does the bass which resembles an echoey drill that’s positioned towards your right ear. Another layer on top of that is the whooping and screeching guitar lines that round off the song nicely. New single ‘The Boy That Life Forgot’ opens with a burst of piano followed by raspy and ghost like vocals. There’s a real honesty in the vocals throughout the album, none more so than in this song and that’s something that many music fans will appreciate and be drawn to with this band. Musically, this song is a bit schizophrenic and it doesn’t know if it’s a ballad or a rock song, but somehow it works sitting somewhere in the middle.

There’s a couple of songs that fall away slightly, possibly the more lo-fi acoustic and stripped back ones. Whilst with a title like ‘Blue Balls And A Broken Heart’ you couldn’t not put it on the album, it’s reminiscent of The Libertines in its rough around the edges approach, but it feels quite unsure of itself in its surroundings when production-wise, everything else is varnished to a high standard. Putting 14 tracks on a debut album though is incredibly ambitious, and it would be near impossible to not drop the ball at some point along the way.

Clocking in at seven minutes 50, ‘Storm Heaven’ is something completely different. The only thing I can think to compare this to is, you know when you let go of a balloon, and instead of tying it, you let it go and it goes all over the place before hitting the deck? Now imagine that, but after letting go of it, it gets caught in a sudden gust of wind and it’s up in the air for eight minutes before getting out of breath and dropping, then you’ve got this song. The only way the band can truly follow up that song is of course, by finishing on another spoken word number, 'Pound Land'. These spoken word songs are a perfect addition to the album and add a great bit of variety to an already healthy assortment of tracks. By this point it’s clear, the band are doing what they want and most importantly, they’re having a laugh while they’re doing it.

This is why they’ll be a perfect addition to the Liam Gallagher arena tour this winter. This will no doubt lift their popularity massively, and much like the balloon, soon they’ll be going all over the place.