Belfast duo Dark Tropics (Rio McGuinness and Gerard Sands) have all the right inspirations, musical (from Radiohead and The Velvet Underground to Aretha Franklin and latter-day Leonard Cohen) and literary (from Paul Auster to William Somerset Maugham). But what is most impressive on their debut album is how effortlessly these influences, and more, fuse into something you don't hear much of these days: genuine individuality.
While their separate backgrounds wouldn’t give many clues as to what their combined work is like (they met via an online ad from Rio looking to sing in a jazz band), the result of about two years of collaborating presents not just an intriguing slant on pop music but also an insightful one.
Despite the somewhat classic influences, there is a distinct contemporary thread running through most of the songs – a little bit of London Grammar here (I Remember), Lana Del Rey there (The Drug) and Lorde over there (Escape).
The dynamic between the pair of musicians is such that you’d wonder who calls the shots, but between the jigs and the reels (not literally, in this instance) we reckon there is an equal give and take here.
The key track, perhaps, is the closer, Helen's Bay, which blends anxiety-driven lyrics ("the fear is in loving you") with contemplative, strings-assisted electro-pop. It might suggest Portishead, but like everything here it whispers Dark Tropics.
