Them There Vinyl & CDs

Review: Manchester two-piece Hyperdawn land on consistently innovative northern imprint Them There with a full length of fractured pop anthems, in turns melancholic, driving and pensive, but always profoundly zonked. The album reads like a weary, extended night bus journey- plenty of time to think, fret, and ultimately heal. The album opens with the strained tones of 'Say it So' - a smudged soundscape punctuated by diagetic bleeps and undercut by filtered strings, before it opens out into the breezier bump of 'Lucky You Lucky Me' and the heads-down whomp of 'Basic', which expands around the midpoint into a hazy mass of seething sawteeth reminiscent of Peder Mannerfelt's narcotic rave experiments. 'Couple of Strangers' and 'Maybe' are more isolationist sketches, with saccharine pads gliding in the distance, and meandering piano riffs calling to mind Actress' more recent forays into pop concrete. Side two opens with the tender, sparse 'Interlude' before the almost James Blake-esque rollick of 'What Have We Come To' - a highlight which wrangles together a charred, swaying groove with heart wrenching extended chords and gossamer autotune vocals. The record then winds down once again over the last three tracks, which culminate in the darkly euphoric 'Steady', which will go down as a surefire autumn heartbreak anthem.