Semaphore - Semaphore

Mark Lanegan, Johnny Cash, Nick Cave, that scary bloke from Crash Test Dummies: you can add Semaphore’s Louis Brennan, a 23-year-old Dubliner with the voice of an aged and evangelical Eddie Vedder to that list of low baritone growlers. His band’s self-titled debut sounds steeped in red wine, whiskey and heartbreak, and at its best it evokes The National’s minor-key anthems with a hint of Two Gallants’ ye olde mythologising. A more consistent comparison is the kind of blustery post-grunge man-rock ballads peddled in the early 90s by the Screaming Trees, an aesthetic that at its lowest ebb created the hideous Creed but in this context sounds revitalised and refined. Occasionally the fire-and-brimstone sermonising threatens to tip over into parody - see Don’t Look Back’s lengthy “We’re all gonna go to Hell” coda - but for the most part Semaphore are sending out all the right signals. [Chris Buckle]