Beautiful

This six-track mini-album from Dublin-based band Fairuza is a frustrating listen. Certainly, there are flashes of genuine inspiration when singer/guitarist Kryz Reid, his brother Carroll on drums and Belgian-born Corentin Simoniz on bass really click, but with a little more direction, it could’ve been brilliant.

For instance, ‘Everyway You Turn, You’re Beautiful’ is a cracking tune, the melody taut as a hanging-rope, the rhythm section providing a tense canvas for Kryz to paint his wordy pictures, with tempo changes seeming more natural than stylised. Similarly, the tight-as-a-fish’s-arse ‘Cherry Vanilla’ sees them heading in the right direction: the thumping beat and Muse-like serrated guitar being sure to endear them to Dublin’s army of indie kids.

‘The Champagne Industry’ and ‘Blister (Reprise)’ though, are too carbon-copy Jeff Buckley for this listener. ‘Hannigan’ might make sense in a live setting, but here its plodding six-minute duration sounds like a band having so much fun jamming that they’ve forgotten completely about their audience, particularly the uber-indulgence of the last two and a half minutes.

An interesting but ultimately unsatisfying debut, then.