The Beat Surrender

We’ve long been fans of Oskar here at The Beat Surrender, in fact as far back as the debut EP which gave us an indication of the claustrophobic sounding debut album that we would instantly fall in love with upon it dropping.

Things had gone a bit quiet since then though,. but true to form Oskar have been beavering away on a new release, writing new songs and honing the sound in the studio until they were sure they had made a worthy successor to their well received debut.

Such is the standard that they set once again on LP:2 that I really couldn’t choose between either of their releases if asked to pick a favourite or stronger album.

Soundwise things have once again moved on with them, while it still contains their trademark orchestration and amazing attention to detail within each track, the songs feel a lot more relaxed than the first album and some of them really benefit for that.

It opens in magical fashion with Paper Cuts, is followed by the delightful piano led track Eden and things are going swimmingly. they nearly get derailed by Reichenbach Falls, the vocals come over a little ‘special needs’ unfortunately and doesn’t really hit the spot.

At that point I worry if the whole album is going to start screaming FAIL. Nope it’s just that one track and the remainder is absolutely majestic stuff, with Ha De Llegar one of my favourites, it sounds like a track i’d imagine playing at the fairground Tom Hanks visits in Big, hard to explain but give it a listen and try and picture it!

Printer Tzara has a hypnotic feel to it while Hi-Beam Blue is the nearest to their early material with a dense, layered feel to it and Simple Lines is just plain lovely. The album closes as all good albums should with a really strong, epic number. Sanatorio is brilliantly orchestrated and has a mournful edge to it.

Another cracking effort from Oskar that is available now through Incarnation Records.