Spectres

Condition

Volcano-force second album from West Britain’s guitarnoise dream team.

The Devon-born, now Bristoldwelling Spectres peeled paint in 2015 with their scorching debut album Dying. Its followup, Condition, lifts roofs. The twin touchstones of Sonic Youth’s Bad Moon Rising and My Bloody Valentine’s You Made Me Realise remain, but this is a harder-edged, less direct, more individual album than its predecessor and much more satisfying than Dead, last year’s superfluous remix reconfiguration of Dying. Condition sounds huge, as if the quartet were playing at maximum volume in a canyon. Sudden shifts between grinding white-noise guitar and metronomic strumming – evoking vintage Steve Albini – are set off against terse riffs and hazy, choirboy vocals. Springy drums and elastic bass save the whole from being unremitting. There are no hits but gale-strength Welcoming The Flowers and the almostballad Colour Me Out are toetappers extraordinaire. The uncompromising Condition is extremely attractive.