If the sporadic single releases of ‘Colour It in’ and ‘Pure Blue’ led Splashh fans down a trippy psych avenue, then ‘Rings’, the first taste of the new record, planted them straight back into the scuzzy-indie they’re accustomed to from the four-piece. Nevertheless, the first single did indeed prove to be a red herring and Waiting a Lifetime is a glorious evolution for the Aussie-Brit band. They’ve still retained their crunchy guitars, fuzzy vocals and insistent rock beats, but Nicolas Vernhes has allowed them to reach far more raucous and experimental musical territory with his dreamy production.

It’s taken four years to come up with a sophomore effort and after several years of touring, a brief relocation to New York and a stint of self-imposed exile to get the album written, the band recorded it at the Rare Book Room Studio in Brooklyn. With half the band in London and the other two across the Atlantic, the idea was to amalgamate the influences of the two cities into a new musical dimension.

Waiting a Lifetime comprises a multitude of distorted layers and ambient garage rock, whilst preserving a loyalty to melody. “You should change if you could,” sings Sasha Carlson on the aforementioned ‘Rings’. Splashh have done exactly that, with second track ‘See Through’ exhibiting Pixies inclinations; only if Black Francis was brought up on Palm Beach. A wave of melancholy then hits for ‘Gentle April’ as a placid groove glides along in one of the record’s more poignant moments.

The album’s lynchpin is undoubtedly the mesmerising ‘Look Down to Turn Away’ though. Unlike anything Splashh have ever recorded before, the epic freak-out begins in ambient fashion with a barely audible spoken word and bass drum pulse. Halfway, these sounds are suddenly droned out in cathartic fashion with distorted keyboards and uneven synthetic noises in what should manifest into a compulsive live spectacle.

‘Waiting a Lifetime’ follows and is the polar opposite with its playful hooks and sing-along parts. It’s one of the only compositions that would fit neatly on the first record and is easily the most instantaneous of the ten tracks. The band again come out of their comfort zone with ‘Closer’, which sees them exhibiting a multitude of tempos whilst still retaining their melodical underbelly.

‘Under the Moon’ is unquestionably the record’s finest song. The dreamy exterior of the first half is gradually drawn away as it morphs into a Tame Impala-esque sparkly synth-led second half: “You and me, under the moon/You were a sunset that went too soon,” croons Carlson before the track is capped off with a proggy dual keyboard/guitar solo. The slow burner ‘No. 1 Song in Hell’ then plays the album out to conclude a seamless ten songs of accessible grooves and hazy explorations. Splashh are still showcasing their slacker-rock tendencies but this time in a much more explorative context.
Paul Hill

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