- Label: 'Last Night From Glasgow/Deezer/I-tunes'
- Genre: 'Indie'
- Release Date: '31.3.23.'
Our Rating:
Promise is the third album by Scottish indie band Popup it's released by Last Night From Glasgow records. The bands web pages seem to give nothing away as to who plays on the album.
The album opens with The Promise that's led by a gentle acoustic guitar being strummed, as the keyboards lightly sprinkle bright notes, as the deep bruised vocals Promise to be a good friend and lover.
Raindrops is a song about someone throwing themselves off a 52-story building, falling through the air like Raindrops over shimmering guitars, this is dark asking the questions, as to why you'd jump.
Angel is slow forlorn, full of regret as Michaels deep Scottish burr adds hints of darkness to this song of betrayal.
The Next Prophet has a slow thoughtful edge as The Next Prophet is slowly described so you can figure out if it's a good or bad idea to treat this person as a Prophet or not, are they like the central character in the film A Prophet or something more worryingly normal, bland yet threatening in ways we haven't quite worked out yet.
The Longest Smile is a downbeat celebration of the person in town that they believe has The Longest Smile in town, as you decide if this is a good thing, or something that makes the owner somewhat forbidding, this has some gorgeous harmonies with the female backing singer.
Snow has gauzy sounds with some gentle glockenspiel, as we find out what happened in the Snow that winters day in the Glen, when they were snowed in.
Solstice was the first single and is a tune my work I-pod loves with a passion, playing it at every chance it gets, this song is now totally embedded in my head, thankfully I haven't tired of hearing it repeatedly, as they tell us just what happened that Solstice, as the world spun against all the contradictions, those strings get me every time. More than one unsuspecting listener to this song, while I've been at work, wondered if it's the bloke from Arab Strap singing.
Hotel is gently brittle tale of life in a Hotel room, that puts flowers on the bed when you arrive as the carefully placed percussion accentuates all the details.
The Polish Word For Love is a story about watching a Bill Murray film where he stars with a Polish woman, this slowly unfolds with quavering notes accentuating her surprise at all the things Bill asks her, this gets spacier musically and is a real gem of a song.
The album closes with Say The Right Thing (At Christmastime) that's about the slowest most depressed sounding song concerning Christmas you could wish for, that keeps with the dour downbeat nature of this quite wonderfully melancholic album.
Find Out More at https://shop.lastnightfromglasgow.com/collections/last-night-from-glasgow/products/popup-the-promise-vinyl-lp-download-march-2023 https://www.facebook.com/popupthebandofficial
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