Hairband - Hairband (Monorail Music)

Hairband’s debut EP is glorious DIY pop straight outta Glasgow, with all the edges, hooks galore and lyrics to defy gravity for

Glasgow five piece Hairband’s debut EP is the record I didn’t know I was missing. It’s glorious DIY pop, with all the edges and hooks galore. This is music to dance about your room to while grinning stupidly at the lyrical deftness; as vital a release as The Royal We album was a decade ago. Hairband have captured a moment and the only reason I don’t want to trap it in amber is because I want to be able to hit the play button again.

The EP was recorded at Green Door Studios and is released on the nascent label of Glasgow’s world beating record shop, Monorail Music. Those are already indicators of brilliance, but neither fact prepares you for the delight of these songs. Youthful and uplifting, yet Hairband also dig deeper. It feels as if each member of the band contributed their entire world to these recordings and all those worlds somehow mesh perfectly. With this and We’re Not Talking by The Goon Sax, 2018 is a banner year for outsider pop.

The first word out of the gate is rather a sound, with the drawn out “Bzzzzzzzz…” of “Bee”. Sweet and jagged at the same time, melancholic with fire on the surface. “It’s gonna be all / It’s gonna be all right”, is the refrain, joyously doubling down on the wordplay. “Bee” is merely a taster, albeit a delicious one. “Bubble Sword” spins out with angular guitars, punctuated shouts (“Hey!”), drawn out vowels (“I-I-I-I-I…”) and an irresistible bassline. Dynamic, focused and at the same time agile, even loose, “Bubble Sword” clocks in at just over two and a half minutes, and is an instant Scottish pop classic. The classics don’t end there either.

“Thank you gravity for all you’ve done for me / But don’t let me go”, goes “Flying”. Which is impossible not to sing into an everyday object as microphone; your daughter’s hairbrush will do the trick. There’s a beautiful spoken word interlude over the middle section which gives me the good kind of shivers: “The journey ahead will be safe and clear and we will arrive at our destination”. Hairband land the existential aircraft with a chorus that bleeds out to the end of the song. “I know a place where we can try and learn how to fly”. And repeat.

Is it wrong that I keep imagining that “White Teeth” is a song about a chance encounter with Tom Cruise? I can see him standing not so tall in the shadows of a Sauchiehall Street doorway, reconstructed smile gleaming out of the dark as if he were an Aphex Twin record cover. “I’ll never forget that face”, sing Hairband. I won’t either.

The EP closes with “Sassy Moon”, a wonderful slice of nighttime pop music. Spooky, uplifting, with that end of the year feeling. “How do you feel? / How do you feel? / How do you feel about the moon?” That the moon’s the limit and Hairband have shot past it with their debut. Pop music is most magical when it’s around the edges and Hairband aren’t anywhere near the middle.

monorailmusic.com