Whilst Telegram have been kicking about on hype lists for some time, they fell silent for a while after debut single ‘Follow’ back in 2013. Since announcing their return with the punchy ‘Taffy Come Home’ in November, the debut album is a welcome one – if anything just to see whether a band pegged as up and coming more than two years ago is still worthy of the label.

It certainly doesn’t feel dated, and the tracks are catchy and fittingly distorted. The guitars thunder along more or less throughout; you can see a crowd soaking it up and head banging away. Their sound is such that they’ll appeal to both indie-pop devotees of a band like Peace whilst simultaneously commanding those who like things slightly heavier.

However with two years having gone by the album seems a little thin on the ground. Most tracks are only a stones throw from the swirling build to urgency of ‘Follow’ (included on the album), where one might have hoped for some more obvious development and variety.

Listen hard and it’s there though. Some tracks have more poppy overtones (see the irrepressibly catchy ’Taffy Come Home’) and others draw on the album’s atmospheric edges like ‘Folly’. The insistent fuzzy guitar framework never lets things space out to the sweeping scale of something like The Horrors, but it isn’t really aiming for that either – they want to keep you in foot-tap mode at least. Later tracks ‘Have It Your Way’ and particularly ‘We’ve Got a Friend (Who Knows)’ have a sharper undertone, and the Jarvis Cocker-esque ‘ah’ in ‘Inside/Outside’ hints at things a little more visceral.

At the end of the day it’s great to have a band about making some really good guitar music. While it’s hard to help feeling like they could have pushed things further or experimented more, they are indeed in their element and it’s hard to begrudge them for it.

Eleanor Weinel