This is the long-awaited first album from London quartet Dream Nails, a glorious amalgam of rage, fun, protest and emotion; reminding you just how good their live shows are.
Interspersing the tracks with short spoken ‘skits’ to introduce songs and keep the momentum going it is a concise 24 minutes, full of insight and energy.

From the start, you are pulled into their world as the celebratory holiday sound of ‘Jillian’ flows into the bitter twists of the workplace in ‘Corporate Realness’. Whatever the messages, the bass sound and drum dynamics are off the scale. The lyrical ideas keep coming, but it is also their music that pushes forward; when I have seen them live the meticulous attention to their set up and sound pays dividends and this production has captured that as-live atmosphere.

The razor-sharp bass and surf-rock guitar splendour of ‘Swimming Pool’ is frenetically followed by ‘This Is the Summer’ which manages to celebrate the season as well as weave a strong environmental theme through the perfect structure of a powerpop single. Watch the video too to see the band performing in a scrapyard, wrestling with a giant frog and footage of climate demonstrations.

‘Payback’ has caustic riffs, a soaring echoing guitar and an excellent wide-ranging vocal performance from Janey Starling in thoughtful quieter sections and then unleashed full-on.

‘In Other News’ introduces one of the most disturbing news items from last year, when homophobic taunting on a London bus led to assault. The band’s explosive response pulls no punches; ‘Kiss My Fist’ is musically and lyrically a very powerful track.

Catch them live when you can, in the meantime enjoy this scorching debut LP!

https://www.facebook.com/yourdreamnails
https://ilovealcopop.awesomedistro.com/bands/dreamnails
https://cambridgemusicreviews.net/2019/06/25/the-baby-seals-blue-moon-cambridge-22-june-2019/
https://cambridgemusicreviews.net/2017/11/21/indiepop-all-dayer-blue-moon-cambridge-18-november-2017/