Two Door Cinema Club- Beacon

Beacon is the second album from Northern Ireland band Two Door Cinema Club, it's an album boasting anthemic arena styled songs with real sonic presence. It's an album with a polished sharpness, it's not afraid to add electronic elements to the omniscient pounding of drums and bass. The opening of Next Year has a discordant electronic pulse before the jangly guitars come into play, the prominence of the bass and drums gives the song a real pulse. Good bands make this sound new and not just a rip and Two Door Cinema Club are safely in the former, pop sensibilities with  a sense of experimentation but a confidence in what they can do. The middle of the song has a nice Beatles feel to it, a melancholy nostalgia floats over the song. Handshake sounds like Pet Shop Boys at their 80's best, a persistent snyth opening that blooms into a track that veers more towards Franz Ferdinand, think resolute percussive rhythms that grab your attention and keep you moving.

Wake Up starts of with a nice funky bass melody and some disco scratchiness on the guitar, blossoming into a full blown vista, the song has a dreamy catchiness to it, punctuated by distorted guitar patters. Sun takes the album to a different corner, a bit more relaxed but once again with a pulsating bass line, then it re-emerges as some sort of British 80's soul song with blaring horns. Someday has the band looking over their shoulders, their heads and ears firmly in the 80's, New Order is being channelled and when it comes to the fore it's given a heavy thunderous rhythmic makeover. Sleep Alone is the best song on the album, it just has this eerie familiarity like you have heard it before but it sounds different, fresh and realigned. Settle has an urgency to it, early U2 springs to mind, urgency and vitality matched together in a way that just washes over you.