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Spotlight

Engineers

Sick of spastic, nattily clad post-punkers and nouveau new wavers with bumping basslines and bloated BPM counts? Calm down, people. Take a deep breath. There’s an antidote for this hullabaloo, and it comes in the form of London-based Engineers. Their self-titled debut album sinks in like a deep tissue massage from the Snuggle bear, performed from a secret den inside Brian Eno’s sound vault. It’s nuanced, delicate, and a bit trippy, angles British rock has forsaken of late.

What’s even more enthralling about this record is how it alternates deftly between heavier, ponderous moments on tracks like “Come In Out of the Rain” — one that will pique aural interest from fans of My Bloody Valentine — to easygoing, concise balladry on “Forgiveness,” on which singer Simon Phipps and guitarist Mark Peters harmonize in a misty, Teenage Fanclub sort of way. A bit of the material here — particularly album opener “Home” and the demure, piano-led “New Horizons” — recalls Air’s homage to spacey California rock on 10,000 Hz Legend, and, quite eerily, so does Engineers’ cover art, with its watercolor depiction of futuristic buildings built into desert cliffs.

But the influences are all worn well by this young band, which formed in 2003. They recently supported Bloc Party on a few U.S. dates, and have headed back across the pond for the festival circuit, which includes stops at Glastonbury, London’s Wireless Festival, and the Reading/Leeds Carling Weekend. Engineers’ self-titled album is out in U.S. stores today.

Links: Engineers official site