The hormones

Where Old Ghosts Meet (V2)

Usually, when a critically acclaimed band decides to call it a day, the various members do the decent thing and become managers or enter the bar trade. On the few occasions that they decide to form other bands, the new incarnations are invariably compared less-than-favourably with the original outfit. The Hormones are not your usual band, though.

They’re fronted by Dubliner Marc Carroll, former chief whiner with Puppy Love Bomb, as famous for their ‘Dublin Is Dead’ t-shirts as their rather fine EPs. Things never really got out of the dog pound for the Puppies, however, and Marc disappeared off the musical map for a while, only to rematerialise last year in the guise of The Hormones.

While the Puppies sounded harsh and spiky, The Hormones have a wonderfully melodic guitar sound, not unlike Teenage Fanclub, The Revenants and Fountains Of Wayne, as the guitars jingle and jangle and the backing vocals doo-wop their way into your head.

The three singles so far are all present and correct: there’s the harder, staccato guitar of their debut, ‘This Is The Sound’; the lyrically intelligent and melodically superb ‘Don’t Let Them Get You Down’, one of the singles of the year so far; and the current 7-inch, ‘Mr. Wilson’.

In the case of the latter, The Hormones didn’t really have to pen this pristine paean to the chief Beach Boy, Brian Wilson, for us to glean the extent of the esteem in which they hold him. One listen to the album’s glorious melodies, sublime harmonies and bittersweet subject matter will have been enough for the initiated.

‘A House By The Hill’ is not so much bittersweet as pained, as Marc casts a caustic eye over the world around him, with something of the apocalyptic tones of a honey-tongued Nick Cave.

‘All We Thought’ brilliantly recreates the excitement of adolescence, when you felt invincible and the world was yours to fuck with. This could be a sister piece to Whipping Boy’s ‘When We Were Young’, as Marc gets all nostalgic about “the records, the news/the gallons of booze/and a thousand sore heads/The fights and the jokes, the sharing of smokes” – and those other things that are the centre of your universe during those teenage years.

While most of Where Old Ghosts Meet owes a debt to the Beach Boys, ‘Dig Like Merry Hell’ sees our Marc paying his dues to another Irishman in exile, Shane MacGowan. Its energy, exuberance and sheer jiggery-pokery inhabit the same whiskey-sodden Kilburn streets as those of the master, and with some style.

The album wanes somewhat towards the end, with ‘Someplace, Somewhere’ and ‘The Kidder’ just filling in time before the cool drum shuffle of ‘Feel Alright’, and the maudlin country winsomeness of the title track, which closes the album with a sniffle and a smile, bring things back on track.

Where Old Ghosts Meet is a highly accomplished, refreshingly addictive, debut album from a band who deserve great things. Cherish them.

John Walshe