If you are in the mood of a soft folk-rock sound there’s a new band that has just provided the right remedy for you. I’m talking about Noah, the debut EP of the quintet Amber Run that recalls the sound of Blur, Mumford & Sons and The Chemical. Will Jones, Tom Sperring, Josh Keogh, Henry Wyeth and Felix Archer met at the University in Nottingham and around the end of 2012 they formed the band that soon found online success with a cover of Imogen Heap’s ‘Hide & Seek’ and we have the pleasure to get to know them better now through their first EP. And considering that they are still in college we can definitely state that Amber Run really is a young band.
From the first listen you’ll notice that Amber Run is a talented band that has the potentiality to produce very good music. Noah, by the way, has a lot of similarities with the style that is typical of Mumford & Sons with their use of acoustic instruments. The Noah EP – and I’m curious to know what inspired this name - is a set of rousing tunes clad in choirboy harmonies and it’s a nice listening even if sometimes the sound becomes a bit repetitive. Noah is the demonstration of the passion that the five guys put into every chord and every word; it’s a good start and, developing their own and more original style, they have a lot potentiality of doing something memorable for the future.
Noah is composed by four tracks spreading less than 20 minutes and it’s a nice listening that will please all folk music lovers. It opens up with the title track that is really pretty close to the style of Mumford & Sons even if the difference between these two bands is that the five guys of Amber Run use more drums and less stringed instruments. The result is that their music is a bit more close to a pop sound than folk.
I do prefer the next track 'Kites’, where the sound is more electric and definitely more original. It’s a nice track. 'Little Ghost' follows the same path of the previous track and has the potentiality to become something better. The closing song is 'Champion' and it's the only one with a different and more original style. Maybe because is a cinematic track and has something dark and gloomy in it. The vocals are suspended in the space of sound and this is a nice effect. It’s a good way to close the EP.
For sure this young band will get somewhere, but they still have to work on their own style a bit. No worries: they have all the capabilities to do it.
