Most of you know the story by now, but for those who weren’t looking, here’s a quick recap of how The Cast Of Cheers emerged as Ireland’s most thrilling young guitar band.
In late 2009, four boys from Swords decided, in a moment of drunken clarity on a Christchurch rooftop, to form a band. One month later, they had a bunch of songs; by the end of that month they were in the studio. A couple of weeks later, they casually uploaded the finished product, a ducking, diving record called Chariot to Bandcamp, where it went on to rack up 150,000 downloads.
Hot Press went ape for them. Acclaim followed, critical and otherwise, as Chariot became the first free download-only album to be nominated for the Choice Music Prize. The Cast Of Cheers got snapped up by Co-Operative label Schoolboy Error in the UK, where they relocated to record album number two with help from Clor’s Luke Smith. The LP’s title track, the deliciously bouncy and shamefully addictive ‘Family’ quickly became the choice cut of Beeb tastemakers Zane Lowe and Fearne Cotton.
Which brings us to today, when, at last, I am allowed to hear the album that confirms The Cast Of Cheers as the most thrilling young guitar band in the world. I promise.
Opener ‘Family’ sets the mood for 35 glorious minutes of unruly, throbbing, freewheeling alt. rock (just overtaking Chariot’s 33.6), of precisely the kind that we’ve come to expect, nay demand, from Adams, Adams, Higgins and Curran – only better.
“How do you feel when your roof is shaking?” Conor Adams bellows on the jerky, Police-referencing ‘Posé Mit’ and he might as well have followed it up with, “Please note your answer for future reference…”, ‘cos you’ll certainly need that feeling over the course of this record.
From the great rolling rhythms of the nonsensical ‘Marso Sava’ to the energising refrain of ‘They Call It A Race’ (just one of countless singable, screamable choruses on the album), Family, like Chariot before it, gives us innumerable reasons to spazz out, but there’s also some gloriously unexpected and impressive mid-tempo moments. The frantic Cheers’ sound takes a dreamy turn on the downright lovely ‘Animals’, while Adams’ dynamite voice, which flits from meek to desperate in the blink of a hook, is permitted to Bogart the limelight on ‘Palace And Run’.
‘Goose’, the band’s head-spinning signature song from Chariot, reappears, albeit in an amped-up version, highlighting the shift in production values achieved by Mr. Smith. With its earwormish guitar lines and mic check-aping vocal distortion, it was too good a track to leave behind; lovers of Django Django, Battles, Two Door Cinema Club or any other band prone to the odd musical stroke, will be grateful to have it on their iTunes.
What is the best thing about Family? It’s not the creative vocal echoing, the wildly creative percussion or the pulsing guitar effects: rather it’s the fact that a dozen listens later, I’m still at a loss to pick a stand-out track. Thay are all that good. Miraculously enough, while Family has clearly taken more care to craft than Chariot, it still manages to feel like a magnificently foolhardy fling.
Having effortlessly charmed their Irish fanbase with what was essentially a 33-minute experiment, The Cast Of Cheers’ second outing will, with a bit of luck, score them a squawking, thrashing, fist-pumping new pack of music-lovers from Bognor Regis to Baton Rouge. Actually, scratch that. When have these boys ever needed luck? Family is a coruscating thriller of an album. Buy.