The scream has a lot of meanings in music: metal rage, Beatlemania, terror, anguish. When generally deadpan singer Rhian Teasdale tries one in the middle of a song flippantly titled Ur Mum, she needs a run-up: “Okay, I’ve been practicing my longest and loudest scream/Okay, here we go/One, two, three…” at which point she sounds like a girl at the top of a rollercoaster but also like someone who just won’t stand for any more nonsense. The song is two fingers to a useless ex: “When you’re getting blazed, spooning mayonnaise, yeah I know it’s time to go.” Elsewhere on the debut album she has made with her fellow guitarist and musical partner Hester Chambers there’s small town boredom, awkward parties, sex dreams and a hilarious surrealism that feels like in-jokes you’ve been permitted to be part of.
No one was looking to the Isle of Wight for the next big thing in indie rock, but here they are, signed to the same record label as Arctic Monkeys and generating similar buzz from the get-go. Chaise Longue, their first single, was released last June, pairing Mean Girls quotes with a scorching guitar line. They’ve already sold out spring and autumn tours, including two nights at the 2,300-capacity Forum in Kentish Town, on the strength of a handful of singles. Good luck squeezing in to any tent they’re assigned at the summer festivals.
Their success has come so quickly that you can still request handmade jewellery from Chambers’ personal website – not that she’ll have time to reply. But the triumph of these 12 songs rests on the fact that the pair did have some time to prepare. It was mostly recorded in April last year, before they’d even played a gig. There’s no feeling of pressure to rise to expectations. It’s the sound of two cool friends having fun with words and music, chanting over a delightfully scuzzy riff on Oh No and mixing an easy acoustic strum with computer game blips on Piece of Shit. They’ve got their arms round each other, looking the other way, on the cover. They do a hair-shaking dance together on a hill by the sea in the video for Angelica, the strongest tune amid stiff competition. It feels like they already have everything they need.
There’s an underlying sadness to some of the lyrics that stops the album from feeling too silly, great fun though it is throughout. But on balance, that scream sounds like a deserved expression of joy.
