Bridal Shower – Negatives: Album Premiere

DIY Glasgow outfit Bridal Shower took a while to arrive at the sound which characterises their debut album Negatives. As drummer Iain Gillon told us earlier this month, "we started off as a shoegaze band, then as a noise act, before finally settling on post-punk, which incorporates those earlier, noisier elements into something more melodic and palatable." William Clapperton, the band's bassist and one of two frontmen, elaborates: "We all love hardcore punk music, but wanted to create something that used the energy from it without all the needless aggression, like an organised chaos."

This shift in sound is consistent with one of the album's major themes, anxiety. "The album is largely reflective of how modern society is full of creeping anxieties at every turn and how we as people rarely find an outlet for all that concern, imagined or otherwise," Lewis Glass, the band's lead guitarist and other frontman explains. "The music doesn't sit still because we can't in our daily lives," Gillon adds, mentioning how their lead single Negatives was inspired by the creepy thriller film One Hour Photo. Even the band's use of duelling vocalists is a platform in which to explore this idea of anxiety and paranoia. Clapperton tells us: "I mostly do the more shouted vocals, while Lewis tends to do the softer spoken lyrics. It's a balance we really liked being able to take advantage of and I think [it] works especially really well on [the band's debut single] Tapeworm."

The four-piece are now looking forward to launching the record at their studio-space-cum-occasional-gig-venue, the Glassworks, on 10 June. "This album I think like most first albums, is very much a collection of influences,” Gillion sums up. “Making this record we were heavily influenced by bands like Sonic Youth, the Melvins and Fugazi and I think it shows. It's been almost two years from writing to release so we've had a lot of time with it to listen and we're very excited to release it." With much of the first album nerves channelled into the sound of the record itself, the launch is set to be an event defined by emotions quite the opposite of negative, and quite rightly so. 

Negatives is released on 9 Jun via Glasseater Records

Bridal Shower play Glassworks Recording Studio, Glasgow, 10 Jun