Leeds based quintet Eades are making some of the grooviest, most danceable post-punk you’ll hear these days. Their debut album Delusion Spree is full of rhythms that grab you from the boredom of lockdown life and yank you headfirst into a bouncy tilt-a-whirl.
Opening track “Reno” is a punchy start with a tale told from multiple perspectives about the guy who Johnny Cash shot in his “Folsom Prison Blues” and it’s every bit as fun and absurd as that description sounds. It’s a statement from Eades, a band who clearly don’t take themselves too seriously and are more intent on being brash and ballsy than pretty much anything else. Harry Jordan and Tom O’Reilly’s vocals are awash with the exuberant energy of bored youth who have broken out of their concrete town and are full of frenzy.
However, sometimes this sense of buoyancy dissipates, and tracks like “Voodoo Doll” descend into boredom. In fact, by the second half of the album everything begins to blur and the band that previously stood out begin to fall into the background. Lily Fontaine’s vocals on “I’m Holding Back Your Hair” once again pique that earlier sense of summer and youth bubbling up, but the way they become buried in the scuzz of guitars muddies everything and it never quite reaches its potential.
There are moments, like the sharp lead guitar line on “Smoking Hour”, that Eades sound like a 90s Brit-pop band, a la Oasis. It’s hard to shake this idea which continually creeps in that Eades are a group in the midst of an identity crisis. There’s new-wave, art-rock, Brit-pop, post-punk and much more going on here, yet somehow Eades are equally adept at everything they put their hand to. This transitory genre-bending isn’t a problem in and of itself, but the bulk of the album leads you to drawing comparisons to other bands or movements; even whilst they’re mocking them, as on the faux philosophical spoken word parts of “Reno” and “Parachute Games”.
There’s a sense of urgency which strikes within moments and it imbues Delusion Spree with a kind of erratic seizing of the moment for a band who are, all things said and done, having just that: a moment. The band recorded live and that’s definitely a defining feature of the record’s sound; it’s got a grit and crunch that maintains the bands authenticity. This quality fizzes throughout the sugary hook laden “Backseat Politic”, which is guaranteed to have you humming along to lyrics like “Oh my lord / when the people say it’s not fair / they forget about us down here”. This is just one of many earworms on the record and the way Jordan speak/shout/sings his lyrics lends certain lines a clipped quality that is a perfect accompaniment to the lightness of the instruments which have a certain elasticity to them. The title track is also a perfect example of much of this.
Eades are, if anything, a fun band, and if Delusion Spree is one thing then it’s full of joy that they exude consistently which gives it a moreish quality that is almost inescapable when it hits you. If Eades can strike this consistency in who and what they are then it will be a delight to see what they’re capable of next.
