9 / 10
Engineers
Engineers are clearly not a band to follow fashion. Revisiting the sound of shoegazing – the once despised indie genre of the late ’80s and early ’90s – is about as anti-fashion as you can get. There’s certainly nothing remotely jerky or angular here; the closest they get to rocking out is ‘Thrasher’ and that must surely be a contender for most inappropriate song title of the year so far. But, make no mistake, this is big, epic, widescreen music, albeit wonderfully understated. Tracks such as ‘Said And Done’ sound like Doves in their more ethereal, less anthemic moments and when there are smatterings of electronica (‘Waved On’) they are as much Air as My Bloody Valentine. But Engineers are never anything less than beautiful. Not so much shoegazing as skyscraping.
Nathaniel Cramp
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