EP review by Shayla Clarke
English indie-rock band Bombay Bicycle Club have excitingly released their new EP today, Fantasies,which sees collaborations between them and four strong and independent female artists.
The lead single ‘Fantasneeze’ featuring Matilda Mann was released in early January. The band said, “when we decided to hold Fantasneeze back for its own release after the album, we kept working and finished off 3 other songs in short order”.
After having only just released their latest album My Big Day back in October of last year, four new tracks are warmly accepted from listeners and showcases their strong relationships and ability to experiment their sound.
A new addition to their music, Mann’s vocals seamlessly fit in to their style on the first track on this EP. When discussing the featured artists on Fantasies, the group said “each song has a good friend of the band singing on it. Some are old friends with long-term close associations to the band, while Matilda Mann is a new collaborator”.
It’s quite the soulful song, with touching lyrics such as “You got me out like a summer’s day / Don’t let yourself get comfortable / That’s what you would say”. It’s the perfect psychedelic-pop track that you’d love to play on a summer’s day, but ironically has been released in the middle of the cold English weather.
‘Blindfold’ features Liz Lawrence, who in her own right has delivered us plenty of electro-pop songs, and this track is no exception. It highlights how you want to hide from events around you, but if you do it could lead to worse things. Lawrence’s soft vocals compliment these lyrics including “Close my eyes forever / Scared I will see something better / Scared I will find something better”. This would have to be my favourite track from the EP.
An organic and textured song and also another that we heard before the official EP release, ‘Willow’ with Lucy Rose includes lots of percussion, but provides us with an airy and folk-type production. Lucy’s vocals don’t appear in this song all too often, but are impactful nonetheless.
To close out the record, we have ‘Better Now’ featuring Rae Morris. It’s a high energy track to bring this chapter to a holt, and one you can picture being played live thanks to the repetitive lyrics and horns. With Morris being a regular collaborator with the band, you can imagine that they had a lot of fun making this song and it pays off with its heavy bass line and passionate lyrics.
This EP featuring Bombay & Friends gives us the pep-up that we need, delivering catchy and heart-warming tracks in a snapshot sized format. Quite honestly, I want more of it and hope it’s not too long before we get to hear more collaborations like this.
