Colour are back with new track Strangers
As emerging North-Westerners Colour make a play for the mainstream, Getintothis’ Patrick Clarke takes in their penchant for prodigious pop in their lavish latest outing, Strangers.
Art-pop by their own definition, on-the-rise Colour of Liverpool and Stoke are irrefutably more pop than pretension.
At their core they are a mainstream guitar-band of glossy proportions and, precisely on the back of that, the foursome truly shine.
Mainstream might be a word somewhat sullied yet, as their newest effort Strangers proves, that needn’t be the case. Though sticking firmly to the kind of smooth verse/soaring chorus pattern that typifies accessible guitar-pop, it’s simply what Colour do with formulaics that sets them apart. They turn the tried-and-tested structure toward their own effervescent textural surge.
Fleshing out that spine is a kaleidoscopic collision of bright, clean guitars that ricochet and abound in an interplaying maze of crisp atmospherics. They dance, surge and recede in equal measure, the polished grit of spacious, unshakable chords dashed across a peppering of early Foals-ish spikes and, later, the squall of a magnificently mazing mini-solo.
Vocally it feels unflinchingly earnest and, in the face of such an intrepid instrumental, perhaps a little by-the-book, but as a whole it’s but another solid element to a finely-tuned and sturdy track that reveals little in terms of an objective flaw.
Ultimately, then, this is not a groundbreaking track. Yet taking it amid its contemporaries it is an extremely impressive one; a vigorous four minutes of highly-produced, infectious guitar-pop.Perhaps there’s much more of the ‘art’ left to shine, but for now it is nothing short of a sterling early effort.
