Keeping going for five albums is quite a feat for an indie pop band, a genre where acts tend to shine blazing bright upon arrival before beginning a similarly rapid descent. It’s now over 12 years since Northern Irish trio Two Door Cinema Club turned their debut album, Tourist History, into a platinum seller straight out of grammar school.
They succumbed to the pressure after the follow-up, Beacon, went to number one, with frontman Alex Trimble experiencing such stress that he was hospitalised with stomach ulcers in 2014 when he should have been headlining Latitude festival. The next two albums were more serious in tone and vanished from the top 40 quickly, and with the lull of the pandemic period thrown in, it would seem like momentum is lost. But in their absence the global success of Glass Animals has shown that there’s still a huge hunger for bands who know their way around a synthesizer, as long as the songs are strong.
