If the title track of the new Silverbacks sounds desperately like a band with a Television fixation, thankfully the rest of Archive Material doesn't tread paths already mapped by The Strokes, a band intent on covering similar territory. Sure, lots of this Full Time Hobby release sounds more No New York than one might expect a band from Ireland to sound, but that's a nice surprise.
Lots of this has a nice ragged appeal, like "They Were Never Our People", and the post-punk agitation of "Rolodex City", but I enjoyed the bits and pieces that didn't seem beholden as much to Tom Verlaine or early Pavement. But those are, frankly, few and far between. Still, "Different Kind of Holiday" is enough like Jim Carroll, or Nineties Geffen act Sammy, to please most attentive ears, and lots of Archive Material mines a similar vein.
I promised myself I'd be more brutally honest in my reviews starting in 2022, while still highlighting the positives (I still only review albums I actually like on some level). So that being said, Silverbacks are very, very in thrall of that whole Tom Verlaine sound. I dig that, but fair warning if you don't as lots of this will likely not work for you. One gets a sense of a band trying a bit too hard in spots, but when they catch fire, Silverbacks create energetic stuff. I only hope that on future releases the group takes more chances, and puts down their copies of Marquee Moon.
Archive Material is out on Friday via Full Time Hobby.
[Photo: Roisin Murphy O’Sullivan]