Thomas White not too long ago released a stunner of a record as The Fiction Aisle. He is better known as half of The Electric Soft Parade, the Brighton-based band he runs along with his brother Alex. The group's releases since their first in 2002 have seen the musicians revitalize whatever you call that genre that was going on near the tail-end of the Britpop years. And the albums from the act after the first have all been uniformly interesting, and all wildly tuneful. The group's newest, Stages, is out today via Chord Orchard, and it's elegant and expansive.
Some of the cuts here, like the obvious and hooky "Saturday", are big and direct, like those of, say, The Boo Radleys from the mid-Nineties, while others, like the surging "Never Mind", rely on the kind of energy one finds in the best material of peers like Swervedriver. If the White brothers are more interested in huge, swoon-y melodic moments than those feedback-obsessed cats are, it's to our benefit. "The Bargain" lurches back and forward like something that T. Rex might have committed to tape. Not entirely glam rock, true, but the riffs here are large to be sure.
"Left Behind", like the best Electric Soft Parade songs from the first record and onward, reminds again of the void that this pair filled at the turn of this century, as the offerings of Oasis and that brand of Britpop failed to deliver on the initial promise shown in 1994 or so. The Electric Soft Parade have always been interested in a majestic hook, and all of Stages is full of them, even the lengthy "On Your Own", a number that owes as much of a debt to Nilsson as it does to the foundation laid by the Gallagher brothers for a more recent generation. If "Fragments" recalls the early stuff from Coldplay, a band that rose to prominence when The Electric Soft Parade did, one can say that White brothers here are more comfortable taking some big chances. I mean, any band who has this many songs over the length of seven minutes on one album is one that isn't afraid of being seen as too brash or ambitious. Given that, that so much of Stages works so well is sort of surprising. In any other hands, this kind of epic music wouldn't have the rush and power that this material has. Alex and Thomas White have delivered an immensely affecting record here, and Stages is one of the first big records of 2020 as far as this reviewer is concerned.
More details on The Electric Soft Parade via the official website, or the official Facebook page.
Stages is out now via Chord Orchard and via the link below.
[Photo: Electric Soft Parade Facebook page]