From Nottingham, England, Escapologists are made up of Nick Davis (guitars/keyboard), Neil Wells (keyboard/vocals/bass), and Pete Fletcher (guitar). Formed in 2006, this group of gents from the Midlands display a wide arrange of musical stylings. From fuzzy synth-pop to more jangly krautrock, then onto driving post-rock, they manage to combine this diverse range of musical expressions into a thoroughly compelling package that holds a bit of something for everyone.
From the first juicy, sparkling synth gems bursting from the speakers in album opener “Countdown”, Escapologists instantly hook you with their unexpected melodies and dreamy take on prog rock. The excellent “Conscience Or Regret” brings to mind all the things I love so much about my favorite New Order album, “Power, Corruption, Lies”. Those guitar hooks and soaring percussions instantly want me to put this on a mix, cradled happily between “Plainsong” by The Cure and New Order’s soaring “Ceremony”. Okay, so both of those also happen to be on the soundtrack for Sofia Coppola’s “Marie Antoinette”, but damn, that just shows girl has some good taste. She’d best pay some attention to Escapologists, because there is something there in their musical structures that really brings to mind gazing out at rolling landscapes, allowing your mind to be ten thousand miles away, galloping around in a gauzy dreamworld.
Sometimes, I associate certain albums with a specific range of colors, and Escapologists “Fireworks” instantly bring to mind something between blurry, slightly muddy pastels found in the films of Sofia Coppola and the muted technicolors found in the work of Pawel Pawlikowski. Some music is so utterly cinematic in scope that it acts as the soundtrack to events as you wished they could have been played out. This is such the case with Escapologists. All is not light and gauzy, however. Running below the surface is a nice, dark tension made up of blood reds and burnt umbers. In “Latitude”, for example, there are definite nuances of Joy Division mixed with the delicate sensibilities similar to those found in The Cure’s “Disintegration.”
“To Vapour” captures the urban destruction of the natural world; the beginning, middle, and end are chronicled in a clinical, yet heart-breaking tone. With subject matter so compelling in execution, and lyrics so succinct and evocative, it is easy to see that Escapologists are a band to keep an eye trained on. With years of hemming their sound sensibilities and honing their craft, they now are able to give forth everything I look for in an outstanding debut album: a driving, transcendental landscape combined with the ability to touch on topics more harrowing than navel-gazing. Rather, Escapologists are searching into the distance, looking towards what might come, and what is sure to be.
“Conscience Or Regret” is available for free download via their label’s Bandcamp page. It is expected to be released as their first single sometime in late January. The group’s excellent debut album, “Fireworks” will drop in late February via Records Records Records. You can watch the video for “Conscience Or Regret” below, as well as listen to their track “Latitude”.
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