Pensioner – Yearlings

The debut from Dundee math-rock quartet Pensioner provides some of the most indisputably silly song titles you'll ever encounter (this writer was particularly taken with Big Trouble in Little Richard, and Bruce Forsyth's 'Chin It To Win It'). That aside, however, humour is not a dominant quality on Yearlings. What the record does demonstrate is a remarkably assured grasp of dynamic possibilities, shifting rapidly between At the Drive-In-style screeching choruses and muted guitar lines.

Pensioner have a fondness for wrongfooting chord progressions and clean/heavy shifts which, combined with an unashamedly dramatic vocal style, sometimes brings brooding post-metal like Isis to mind. For the most part, though, there are too many ideas here, and too much hyperactive enthusiasm, to contain the music within that sort of template. The titles might suggest a band that don't take things too seriously; yet Yearlings is a deceptively accomplished record. [Sam Wiseman]