There’s a vintage indie-rock vibe to ‘At the End of a River, the Sea’, the second album from Kentish quartet Theatre Royal, and they’ve clearly put a lot of thought into the songrwiting process to produce an album that radiates quality and consistency.
‘Powder Blue’ - not an Elbow cover, but an impassioned piece of dynamic alt-rock that has a hint of Crowded House about the harmonies - hits instantly with hooks galore. They may be from Rochester, but the jangling ‘Story of My Life’ shares more with the 90s Mersey sound of The La’s than their local contemporaries.
There’s a bright, breeziness that permeates the jaunty toe-tapping tunes, but beneath the harmonies and sweet acoustic guitar sounds, there’s a seriously lively rhythm section and some searing guitar racket burning away a little lower in the mix, as evidenced on ‘Death on the River’.
The Hammond that whirls and tweets around ‘Powder Blue’ comes to the fore on ‘Home of the Achingly Dull’, and dullness is certainly Theatre Royal can’t justly be accused of as they maintain the energy – and quality – throughout. It’s not all upbeat and cheer, though: there’s a more melancholy feel to ‘Will England Rain Itself Dry?’ which boats some nice Johnny Marr-esque guitar detail. The weather – fittingly for the last year – is a recurrent theme: ‘I wear sunglasses in the rain’ begins the chorus of ‘These windows’.
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The sparse acoustic ‘Three Ships’ is slow, sad and lonely and breaks the album up nicely, setting up the uptempo action of ‘I’m Leaving in the Morning (I Don’t Think I’m Alive)’. Oliver Burgess sounds like he’s in one heck of a hurry to get going! ‘A Hundred thousand Tears’ has the simplicity of 60s beat pop coupled with an almost skiffly bounce. Bold brass brings an extra dimension to ‘stuck to the Floor’ before the country-tinged ‘High tide and Springtime’ draws the album to an appropriately anthemic conclusion. All killer and no filler, ‘At the End of a River’ has all the makings of a future classic.
Theatre Royal Online
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