In retrospect, you could never have called it a scene; despite the loose geographical ties between Working Men’s Club, The Lounge Society, and The Orielles in Calderdale, anybody with a functioning pair of ears knew that there were few, if any, musical properties the various bands shared.
Seven years (roughly) since the release of their debut album Silver Dollar Moment, the latter find themselves at something of a crossroads. The group’s well-received third album Tableau had been the result of pooled minds and studio improvisation, but for its successor, the trio – sisters Esmé and Sidonie Hand-Halford, along with Henry Wade – turned the writing process back inwards.
Only You Left – deliberately the title can be posed as a question or as a statement – is a record where grooves tend to win out over songs, in form elements composed predominantly of shoegaze, murky drones and angular post-punk. At its most obviously cohesive on the Stereolab-adjacent “Tiny Beads Reflecting Light,” the boldest moves, though, come via “Wasp’s” alt-disco and the tribal un-funk of “Embers,” although across it’s full body not enough is made of Esmé’s crystalline voice. It was never a scene, and on Only You Left, The Orielles have ascended further out into a cosmos all of their own.
You can read a full review here.
The Voice Of Unreason 