The Altered Hours – You Are Wrong (Pizza Pizza Records)
Underground Cork-based alternative rock band The Altered Hours return with wonderfully woozy single You Are Wrong ahead of their second full length album, due out in October on Pizza Pizza Records.
Artist: The Altered Hours
Track: You Are Wrong
Label: PIzza Pizza Records
Released: 2 September 2021
Find it: Bandcamp | Spotify
Love is not all hearts and flowers. Love is not always joy and awe at the wonderousness of another. Love is not always easy, not a constant. Love is, sometimes frustrating, nearly always something to be nurtured rather than become complacent about.
So it is on You Are Wrong, the latest single and ‘a love song turned on its head’, from Irish alternative rock band The Altered Hours.
There’s a ponderous tone to the vocals – a duet between Elaine Howley and Cathal MacGabhann – and the steady thump of rhythm, juxtaposed against shimmering and insistent percussion, rise and fall melody. Structurally moving between these close, claustrophobic passages, and more expansive space-filled sections the gulfs and compulsion to cross them when nurturing a love is perfectly reflected here. Part nu-gaze, part psych-rock the track is held back from indulgence, staying lean for the listener even while providing deep melody to become wonderfully submerged in.
‘Lovers run away / Maybe we’re just here to stay / You are wrong / Again’
Some bands seem to be forever pushing forward and striving for a destination which always just exceeds their reach. The Altered Hours seem content on their journey and to let success find them (which isn’t to say they aren’t driven, their longevity speaks to that) as they explore every shadowed corner, ever sunlit-mote of their expansive sound.
And what a sound it is, what detail and delights they uncover as they lean further in to it. Spanning genres which can tend toward formulaic The Altered Hours find ways to break those moulds and continuously produce music which sounds unmistakably like them, which lodges and loops in the mind, and which stays with you long after its echoed its last internally and out.
With You Are Wrong they add to their canon in a way which is both spun out, and insistently claustrophobic. Coming ahead of their second album, Convertible, it’s a tantalising taste of what else that long player holds in store for us and is another faultless step on this band’s journey.
You Are Wrong by The Altered Hours is out digitally now via Pizza Pizza Records. Their new album Convertible is available for vinyl and digital pre-order now ahead of release in October 2021. The band has UK tour dates through Autumn supporting Fontaines D.C, followed by further UK headline dates.
Find The Altered Hours: Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | Spotify | Bandcamp
Band image: Izabela Szczutkowska
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Sarah Lay
A long-standing music journalist she's also co-founder of independent record label Reckless Yes, an author of novels, and when not messing around with words and music, a digital strategist.
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