‘Dim the lights, The lights, The Life, Has gone out from their eyes, But they’ve still got their appetites’ (An Appetite)

Hunger For A Way Out is the 2020 debut album from post-punk duo Sweeping Promises and is remarkably now on to its 10^th press.  It is not hard to see why.  Strikingly spartan yet unerringly infectious riffs are underpinned by looping bass lines and spryly bouncing drums, which are in turn leavened by fleeting flourishes of electronic brass to create a soundtrack that is as deeply engaging as it is minimalist in execution.

Yet even then, it is, perhaps, the vocals that steal the show.  Stridently melodic, delightfully nuanced, and saturated in a rich pop sensibility, they deploy repetition to powerful effect.  They also inject a notable warmth and energy to proceedings as they grapple with society’s suffocating appetites.  There is also a satisfying spareness to the songwriting, the clear sense of a tightly defined lens inspiring the band to test those parameters to their very limits.

From the opening riff of the title track your attention is seized.  The vocalised motif to Cross Me Out is genuinely spine tingling, and the momentum never drops for even a moment from the starkly resonant bass line of Blue to the eerily enticing An Appetite.  Once you have immersed yourself in the album, the fact that it was recorded in its entirety using a single microphone in an abandoned concrete laboratory feels entirely fitting.