Album Review :: Clean Cut Kid - Felt

Album

Clean Cut Kid

Felt

April 28 2017 (Polydor)

8/10

Words: Jane Davies

Having already whetted our appetites with a clutch of catchy single releases, this eagerly awaited debut album from the Liverpool fuzz quartet certainly does not disappoint.

Recorded at Liverpool’s Parr Street Studios with producer Rich Turvey (Blossoms, The Coral), London's Konk Studios with Arcade Fire collaborator Craig Silvey and London's Voltaire Studios with Cam Blackwood (George Ezra, Wolf Alice), the band bring upbeat, catchy pop tunes that mask the record's concept that chronicle a failed relationship and a blossoming new one throughout the 11 tracks. Whether this comes from the personal experience of husband-and-wife members Mike and Evelyn Hall, is open to speculation.

From the glitchy pop opener ‘Vitamin C’, which epitomises the rallying efforts of the soon to be spurned partner attempting to preserve a failing relationship (and ends so bluntly, that you can imagine someone has just been told they are no longer wanted) through to the happy ending finale of the rousing anthem which screams ‘1980’s, ‘Pick Me Up', the album packs in a wealth of uplifting moments as it proceeds.

‘Runaway’ races along to a beat of a drum that mimics a racing heart, capturing as it does the desperation in the line, “everything you thought would be yours slipped between your fingers and you’ll never know how”. The infectious 'Leaving You Behind’ - “you can go your way and I promise to go mine” - is the sort of song you pack your car up to with all your possessions and then drive away. “I’ll never forget, I’ll never regret” - a perfect mantra for a lost love.

While ‘We Used To Be In Love’ is the big 80s inspired anthem full of raw emotion - it's a 2017 version of REO Speedwagon - ‘Brother’ keeps it simple. Played on acoustic guitar it is a slow, reflective song portraying how we talk things over with a trusted mate, trying to see how and why it went wrong. ‘Evelyn’is full of big guitar riffs; a joyous song that discovers love again, and ushers in another heart-tug.

Clean Cut Kid have achieved with this album not just the perfect soundtrack to the summer, but if you have recently been unlucky in love, it may even help you heal that broken heart too.