4.

Two Door Cinema Club
Tourist History

This album neatly fulfilled the role that Bombay Bicycle Club’s I Had The Blues But I Shook Them Loose did last year (something about a band name with ‘club’ in it?), and which has also been filled by the likes of Bloc Party, Franz Ferdinand and Maxïmo Park in the past: that of ‘spiky indie rock album of the year’. Irish group Two Door Cinema Club have all of the qualifications for this. Jangly guitars – check. Quick-fire drums – check. Second guitar playing a fast high-end riff over the chords – check. Catchy choruses – double check. Two Door Cinema Club nail it all perfectly. There’s not a misstep anywhere on this record, and while the band don’t yet have, say, Bloc Party’s innovation, they have the quality of songwriting – seen consistently across the 10 tracks on show here – to catapult them into that kind of company. Tourist History is, admittedly, not especially novel as a record. It stands on the shoulders of similar bands going back at least as far as The Libertines, but Two Door Cinema Club do a good job of balancing themselves while perched up on these various shoulders. A lot will depend on album two – a clone of this record and they may well sink without a trace, another step forwards (something which they certainly would seem capable of), and they could be bothering the top of my album list for years to come. In other words, they need to take a leaf out of Bombay Bicycle Club’s book...