Life can pass you by. One minute you awake to find yourself the wrong side of 30, married, with two kids. I use my relatively humdrum experience as a mere example.

Similarly on first listen, you would be forgiven for listening to The Isles’ debut album as if it was background music in a club with the world’s quietest PA system. So understated do vocalist/guitarist Andrew Geller, Ben Haberland on guitar and backing vocals, bassist Chris Bordeaux, and Tim McCoy on drums come across as, it’s indeed some surprise to discover their lyrics sheet isn’t entirely scrawled in lower case. Those who return to the recording, however, will discover Geller and co silent but deadly assassins of your initial indifference.

Whilst their dress sense evokes Oxbridge graduates entering their bohemian phase, musically the (non-British) Isles, the four hail from New York, reflect more their Manchester base of their label, Melodic. The founder of that particular recording company David Cooper, talking of his signings in general to The Independent, revealed Melodic was deliberately named: “Even if the music might be uncompromising and left-field, there has to be a hook in there." A point not lost on the band’s Ben Haberland who declared: “I’m a huge Smiths fan, particularly Marr’s approach to tracking walls of sparkling, harmonized guitars.”

It’s no great shock then that The Isles, who first broke through on the New York Noise Compilation amongst the likes of Young People and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah with ‘Fuck’, mine the north-west music scene of The Smiths, Joy Division, and Echo the Bunnymen. To such an extent that Guardian music journalist Dave Simpson titled his profile of them and the likeminded Voxtrot: “Stop me if you’ve heard this before”. Elsewhere, ‘Summer Loans’ continues the whistling craze restarted by cult Swedish favourites Peter, Bjorn, and John.

Yet if one song sums up The Isles experience, it’s closer ‘Post Nobles’. With lyrics like “I left my body today back in the tenement that I live in” songwriter Geller perfectly encapsulates a drizzly Manchester skyline. Grey would appear to be the new black.
(3¾/5)