Sarcoline is a tone often associated with flesh. Naming your band after the word implies a bareness, as if the Staffordshire band aims for the purposefully underproduced, revealing a grittily naked devotion to their craft.
The craft itself is indie rock. They’re fans of canon, citing a shared adoration for Kasabian, Kings of Leon and Arctic Monkeys as a primary motivator for the band’s existence.
In reality, Sarcoline are not quite like any of these. There’s none of the hip-hop leanings Kasabian favour, or the spaced-out lounge rock of the last two Arctic Monkeys albums.
It’s closer to dance-punk. New single ‘Narlows Lane’ is noisier than most indie rock, and Joel Campbell’s wails are far more aggressive than any Kings of Leon vocal lines. It’s a busy song too, with guitar riffs that sound agitated, and solos saturated by effects-laden mixing.
The song’s propulsive forward motion is at odds with its lyrics. A fear of becoming unknown leads to Campbell singing about dreams of thus far unachieved success – ‘I’m stuck on Narlows Lane, there’s no escaping it.’
It’s mirrored by the single’s artwork too, depicting the street sign for Narlows Lane being worn like a yoke, the figure depicted crushed under its weight.
It’s poignant in context. Is a small-town mentality preventing greater things, and what can we not escape, the place, the lack of progression or both? For what is sonically a reasonably straightforward song, Sarcoline scatter occasional profundity throughout, enough to ensure ‘Narlows Lane’ doesn’t exhibit the pitfalls of indie landfill.
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