The Beat Surrender

If you pick up Beat Pyramid and it’s the first thing you’ve heard by the four 19 year olds who go by the name of These New Puritans, you’d be forgiven for reading this review alongside it and wondering why I’ve given it a good mark.

I say that because on listening to it at first you don’t pick up on a lot of the subtle brilliance that does come out with further listens. On a first run through I was thoroughly disappointed, it seemed average at best, which when you’ve tipped the band to produce one of the best albums of this year does leave you looking a bit daft.

As I’ve said though, repeated listens does bring it’s rewards, which is quite often the case with good albums, they aren’t designed to be ‘got’ straight away and this is certainly the case with this one. By my third play through I was loving the fact that I was finding new elements to their combination of post punk guitars and the throbbing bass that underpins their sound.

Vocally and lyrically it’s neither the best sung or the deepest album you will ever come across but is a shed load of fun and is one of the funkiest guitar albums you’ll hear this or any other year.

The first song proper to let you know what you are in for is Numerology (AKA Numbers) which has been released as a single previously. The post punk angular sound of Colours follows that and then you are onto my second favourite track on the album, the fantastically stop-start awkwardness of Sword Of Truth.

My favourite track? Oh come on, it has to be Elvis, the song released as a single shortly that should hopefully kick start their mass appeal, it’s a throbbing dance-floor crasher of a track that once heard gets so far under your skin it nearly comes back out the other side. It could well be the single of the year.

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