With a five-year gap between their new album, The Steady Hand and their last you can’t help but wonder if their sound will have changed slightly to adhere to the indie rock status quo (a la Coldplay). Thankfully, by the sounds of things, they haven’t.
While compared to the likes of Teenage Fan Club and Dinosaur Jr. you’re more likely to pick up on elements of good old post-grunge bands, particularly mid-generation Foo Fighters and early Pearl Jam and while New Radiant Storm Kings may produce a sound of their own The Steady Hand is more likely to attain positive criticism via its comparability to bygone bands successful sounds.
From the offset The Steady Hand provides us with fun filled tunes, such as “The Winding Staircase” an up-beat pop-rock focused track with added delicately vocalised lyrics. Next in line is “Accountant Of The Year”, a slightly heavier track with a bass line that sounds similar to some of Kerbdog’s mellower moments from “On The Turn”.
“Anthym” perhaps shows the closest resemblance to the Foo Fighters sound mentioned before; with fast, yet downplayed guitars and drums allowing Pinkerton’s voice presidency and, while Pinkerton’s voice is first-rate in its own right, you’ll be hard pressed not to think of it as a good Dave Grohl impersonation.
Later in the album “Hands and Eyes” provides a great guitar riff with just a smidgen of hard post-grunge of the My Bloody Valentine variety and while it never quite reaches that style fully, it is easily one of the better tracks on the album, allowing a lateral element to emerge within the otherwise normalcy of The Steady Hand
It sounds like an insult to say the best part of an album is the end, but with The Steady Hand the mellower, more nostalgic tracks are “Yardsale Legacy” and the penultimate “Come On And Let Yourself Win”. “Yardsale…” with its laid-back vocals and smooth guitars rhythms provides a placid environment for the remainder of the album, making you pine for hot summer evenings. “Come On And Let Yourself Win”, meanwhile, brings the tempo up slightly while keeping a soft, melodious focus to the sound.
Overall The Steady Hand doesn’t break any moulds or step into new terrain, nor does it intend to; New Radiant Storm Kings have produced an album that while feeling eight or so years out of date hopefully might remind people just how good the indie/post-grunge scene once was. The Steady Hand then, is a passive appendix to a now retro scene and an album that will remind everyone just how good it all once was.
