March 31 2015: This review is for Hin­ter­land by The Bed­room Hour. I’ve been made aware that some peo­ple are expect­ing to read about new album Hin­ter­land by LoneLa­dy.

So, The Bed­room Hour’s debut album, Hin­ter­land is final­ly here. The band were post­ing reg­u­lar updates on its progress and suc­cess­ful­ly crowd fund­ed to help with its release. I’m feel­ing that same sen­sa­tion when a good friend has just had a baby  – you’ve been there for the announce­ment, cooed over the fuzzy scan pho­to, and now here it is, in its glo­ri­ous vocal reality.

Hin­ter­land’s cov­er shot first appeared on The Bed­room Hour’s cool new web­site, which they unveiled a cou­ple of months ago. It’s a dra­mat­ic, moody view of Lon­don under a thun­der­ous sky in which your eye trav­els from the glit­tery Shard and finan­cial district/tourist cen­tre to its out­ly­ing sprawl, its whole suf­fused with some­thing dark. I’m remind­ed of JG Bal­lard’s nov­el King­dom Come, an unease, a dis­lo­ca­tion, Lon­don the Hin­ter­land. The image is accom­pa­nied by Ocean – an intrigu­ing instru­men­tal track, lay­ered and dense, which oozes with ten­sion. Con­tin­u­ing on a watery theme is Sea with­out Water… one of my favourite Bed­room Hour songs, a dreamy, wist­ful bal­lad with a strong hook and pleas­ing­ly retro sound­ing rip­pling gui­tar by Rob Payne. It’s the per­fect vehi­cle for Stu­art Drum­mond’s emo­tion-drenched vocals which are allowed to soar as the song reach­es its final few bars. And it’s the one you will find eas­i­est to sing along with after a few drinks. The next num­ber, Noc­tur­nal is anoth­er pow­er­ful num­ber: there’s the gui­tar intro which rip­ples and soars, and the strong cho­rus, Stu­ar­t’s lyrics bemoan­ing love lost, ‘sleep through the day, just to get away from the thought of you with some­one…’ Heart will Haunt is a song famil­iar to fans. The song paces itself with a slow build, a mas­ter of restraint that takes two steps for­ward and one step back. Its per­cus­sive start leads into Stu’s vocals with the gui­tars weav­ing in, Andy Cop­per’s bassline beau­ti­ful­ly hold­ing it togeth­er. I always feel that this song has to tread a fine line to keep the vocal deliv­ery con­trolled, which Stu­art man­ages suc­cess­ful­ly, but there’s the poten­tial in the wrong hands for this num­ber to sound overblown. I’ve only heard track 6, Sap­phires recent­ly, and it’s a beau­ty, a vocal-lead num­ber suf­fused with emo­tion, with an anthemic cho­rus. Things get more rocky and upbeat on track 9 I See Suns, with gor­geous­ly sexy bass under­pin­ning the track. The bluesy qual­i­ty of Stu­ar­t’s voice real­ly shines and I love the euphor­ic burst of key­board. It’s good to see the band flirt with their music a bit more and explore their upbeat side. It would be inter­est­ing if some­one could do a dance remix. Title track Hin­ter­land occu­pies the penul­ti­mate posi­tion  – the yin to first track Ocean’s yang – and it has that lush, mul­ti-lay­ered, dreamy qual­i­ty of the open­er. The album clos­es with A Map Made from my Bones, which I first heard at the band’s appear­ance att Par­adise at Ken­sal Rise. I was look­ing for­ward to hear­ing it again and it does­n’t dis­ap­point. There’s a strong bass line from which the song launch­es into a wall-of-sound are­na-fill­ing inten­si­ty with a plain­tive gui­tar riff hat com­ple­ments Stu­ar­t’s vocals. Wish­ing you guys all the best tonight in Man­ches­ter!! Hin­ter­land will be avail­able on iTunes from July 14, order here The album launch par­ty is on Sat­ur­day 12th July at Night and Day cafe, Man­ches­ter https://www.facebook.com/thebedroomhour Below is an ear­li­er video of the band: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rqpo5PIg0EE