In that notorious online letter Eagulls wrote a few years back – which has come to unjustly overshadow their music – the main sense you get is a frustration at bands leaving behind a legacy of music that sounds like it’s from the UK in favour of pursuing global trends. Eagulls on the other hand certainly don’t. Evoking the grey urban landscapes bands like Joy Division so famously conveyed. The level of Eagulls’ success is down to how they manage to pull off the unique trick of combining this bleak, uncompromising atmosphere with hooks that once they get their claws into your brain, never really let go. It’s a pretty competent blueprint, and Eagulls could have spent the next few releases re-using it to make fan-pleasing albums, although perhaps with slowly diminishing returns. But Ullages isn’t that. It’s a more expansive record. We’re still in the same claustrophobic council estate, but their gaze is fixed on the sky, instead of on the enclosing walls.
‘Heads or Tails’ starts the album with a riff which sounds like the opening to ‘What Difference Does it Make’ by The Smiths played at the wrong RPM. When it kicks in we’re given the materials most of the record will be built from. The pounding drum beats of their debut’s opener ‘Nerve Endings’ has been replaced with a looser, slower half-time rhythm as the high hats skitter along on 8th and 16th notes, meanwhile the metallic and twangy bass tone rolls along and jangly, picked guitars fills the rest of the space. These are the basic components that make up the DNA of Ullages and they use them to good effect throughout, with enough interesting variation. ‘Aisles’ employs a marching snare roll while the guitar softly drapes sparkling chords over everything, and ‘My Life in Rewind’ has a swaying, waltzy ¾ time signature. In ‘Velvet’ the bass menacingly swells and then quickly recedes while cavernous percussion sound like it’s coming from out of the depths of a long dark tunnel.
The same rhythmic lethargy comes up again on ‘Skipping’, all rolling tombs and rumbling bass. Singer George Mitchell laments being a “victim of monotony” with an extended metaphor of a broken record representing the sense of discontent and unanswered questions that pervade his psyche. ‘My Life in Rewind’ sees Mitchell feeling the immeasurable weight of his own decisions and an inability to stop reliving past mistakes: “A thousand regrets rush right by”. The vitriolic nature of the band’s début has become more muted. On Ullages they replace it with a general uncertainty and dissatisfaction.
As Jeff pointed out in his recent feature interview he did with the band, ullage is a word that means the amount by which a container falls short of being full. It’s essentially another version of the ‘glass half full/glass half empty’ dichotomy. Eagulls understand that such a dour and gloomy view of things is essentially a subjective perspective and escaping it is only a matter of changing your outlook. “Lets take a stab in the dark tonight / to open up who we are inside” Mitchell suggests in ‘Heads of Tails’. He’s his own prisoner, but also his only way out.
If their debut pulled endless comparisons to Joy Division, then Ullages follows that same trajectory, by capturing the transition from the post-punk of the late 70s into the indie rock of the 80s. The Cure particularly loom large in George Mitchell’s vocal, who has the same yelping tenor as Robert Smith, which has a bellowing, almost siren-like quality to it. It can add a level of anguish, like on ‘Psalms’ as he wails “Is our future as grey as the slabs on our drive?”
The newfound space in their sound is clearly something they’re still in the process of getting to grips with it. There isn’t anything on here that will jolt you awake in the same way ‘Tough Luck’ and ‘Possessed’ from their first album do. The hooks on that record, while uncomplicated, were instantaneous in their effect. With more space to move around in, Mitchell occasionally struggles to create enough authority to keep hold of your attention on the more drawn out melodies. The choruses are still here but are more subtle shifts, and with none of the chant-like qualities of their debut.
It’s a dreamier and much less direct affair with a prettier and glossier sound. Ullages is a clear and confident departure; Eagulls know which direction they wanted to take the album and overall they have taken it there with ease and confidence. The music makes sense thematically in how it complements the song’s topics and creates a consistent mood. But you still can’t help but miss the venom and bite, which is in its own way also an escape.
Louis Ormesher
Website: eagulls.co.uk
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