With a record title like Cold Walls/Cloudy Eyes, you can already tell you’re going to be in for a grouping of sad tunes from the Berkshire based band Hindsights. You definitely wouldn’t be wrong, but the emotion put into the band’s debut full-length record extends so much further than the basic emotion of sad.
The album starts with “Everything Inside Me Echoed”; a slow paced drag of a song a la Floral Green-era Title Fight, which seems to me like the least likely track to be considered for an opener. The record throughout is peppered with these mellow, clean electric sections, bringing clarity amidst the distortion.
“Cold Walls” picks up the pace a bit and really begins to get the record moving forward. The vocals throughout the record are vaguely Rivers Cuomo sounding and this is the first instance they truly stand out in the song. Songs like “Cloudy Eyes” and “Colour, Blind” follow in a similar mold, the latter of which contains some excellent harmonies and instrumental breaks that I found myself coming back to several times over.
“Waiting Room” sounds like the spiritual successor to “Everything Inside Me Echoed”, but it builds and builds just to never fully builds into anything substantial, which, though accurately reflects the emotion the lyrics gave, ultimately still feels disappointing.
The entire record itself relies a lot on the atmospheric properties of the songs, which becomes the glue that really holds this collection of songs together. There’s enough variety in each song to make the record interesting throughout, but each song conforms to this similar cloudy atmosphere, which gives each song the same weight and feeling.
The best example of this is near the end of the final song “Sore” during the instrumental right before the last chorus where everything finally blossoms and reaches a peak that reflects the depression lyrically and emotionally being conveyed in the previous songs. It’s as if the entire record before that point was skirting around an issue and that minute at the end of “Sore” just goes right out and bluntly explains everything.
By no means is Cold Walls/Cloudy Eyes a flawless debut, but it is a stellar debut full-length from a band that’s currently doing a lot very, very well. It's a record that I would highly recommend taking a listen to, and no doubt a band to keep an ear out for in the future.
Tracklist:
1. Everything Inside Me Echoed
2. Cold Walls
3. Pensive
4. See You Soon
5. Out Of My Skull
6. Colour, Blind
7. Daze
8. Waiting Room
9. Cloudy Eyes
10. Sore
RIYL: Floral Green by Title Fight, Basement, Pinkerton-era Rivers Cuomo
Rating:
More reviews by Josh Jurss
