The debut album from Britain’s Dartz! comes complete with the kind of hype that would make most bands wither. It’s a testament to William Anderson, Henry Carden and Philip Maughan that they weren’t completely overwhelmed by the level of expectation. Yes, they’re the next spiky, angular skewed-pop merchants heralded as the saviours of British music, which is slightly unfair.
There are echoes of Bloc Party in the taut rhythms, staccato drums and fuzzy guitar wig-outs, while the now ubiquitous time-changes (‘Documents’) and air-punching shouty choruses (‘Prego Triangolos’and the piss-poor ‘Teaching Me To Dance’) are all present and correct. Indeed, it would be easy to dismiss Dartz! as another bunch of me-too Gang Of Four wannabes. However, songs with the manic energy of ‘A Simple Hypothetical’ or the humour value of ‘Cold Holidays’ are just too good for such lame comparisons. They may wear their influences on both their sleeves and their skinny jeans from time to time, but it’s hard not to get caught up in the sheer energy and exuberance of tracks like current single ‘Once, Twice, Again!’ or ‘Fantastic Apparatus’, which balance their sheer gumption with an inherent grasp on melody that could see them troubling the chart compilers yet.
‘Laser Eyes’ shimmers with the kind of infectious streams of melody and barely controlled anger that recalls 100 Broken Windows-era Idlewild, while the similarly impressive ‘St. Petersburg’ is their gloriously off-kilter two-minute state-of-the-nation address, and the album closer, ‘The Lives Of Authors’, suggests that there may be more strings to their bow than four-to-the-floor anthemic stompers.
Dartz! are not going to change the world and it would be unfair to burden them with such weighty expectations so early in their career, but there are enough moments of genuine accomplishment in the 12 songs here to suggest that they may be more than one-album-wonders to be cast aside when the next emaciated British guitar hope comes along.