Arcade Parade
Cave of Swimmers is everything you want a young indie band to sound like.
The band are currently unsigned but they have produced a small selection of songs in the studio and released an EP titled Cave of Swimmers on Itunes. The EP was released on the 27th of May and you can buy it now for just over £3 on Itunes.
The band Arcade Parade consists of teenage brothers Ollie and Elliot Scott and their two friends Dan Byrne and Jacob Ferguson.The youthful quartet has an average age of fifteen and what they may lack in life experience they definitely make up for in their song writing. They sing with both conviction and passion with riff driven guitars intelligently contrasting with melodic guitars and a mixture of rock baselines and soft rock melodies with catchy choruses.
Grace is the first track on the EP.The song is upbeat and catchy and is a total of five minutes long. Starting with a steady four bar beat the song soon fades into a guitar long intro that reminds me of the likes of the Kings of Leon and The Arctic Monkeys.
When lead singer Ollie Scott’s vocals sound through my headphones I can’t really compare his voice to many other indie singers on the market, he has a very distinctive and raspy voice for the young age of sixteen. If there was one flaw I could point out in the lead vocalist’s voice it would be the lack of diction. Sometimes I couldn’t understand what he was singing and this disconnected me from the meaning of the lyrics.
Cave of Swimmers is the second track on the EP, it is a three minute track that starts with a memorable guitar hook and a mixture of different drum beats. This track is my personal favourite because after listening to song twice I found myself singing along. I think this song has the strongest lyrics than the others on the EP.
Eyes Open is the third song on the EP and it starts with a rhythm of guitar beats and then leads into a catchy guitar hook. The intro is also quite long on this track too similarly to the one in the song Grace. Out of all of the four tracks I found Eyes Open to be one of the most memorable rhythms. Out of the Picture is the final track on the album and another one of personal favourites. It is much slower than the other three songs and I like the message behind the lyrics.
The EP has already received excellent reviews; Green man music said that ‘Cave of Swimmers is everything you want a young indie band to sound like... It is euphoric, hooky and just gets the job done perfectly with the minimum of fuss.’
Counteract magazine also gave the band an excellent review by saying ‘Playing catchy song after catchy song, this band that are already emerging on the lock scene oozed potential and raw talent. Arcade Parade are certainly a band to watch.
Winners of Shropshire’s ‘Next Big Thing’ competition, Arcade Parade are clearly a band worth listening too and I predict good things for this band in the future. They have already performed at The O2 Academy3, Birmingham Ballrooms and The Slade Rooms.
I enjoyed their EP Cave of Swimmers and it will take a proud place in my Itunes. The four songs are quite similar so I would like to hear a few indie ballads from the band in the future, I would like to hear the raw emotion that I know the lead vocalist Ollie Scott is capable of.