Busting straight outta the block with a furious, cacophonous machine-gun drum roll, the latest offering from Tim Showalter’s Strand Of Oaks sets out its stall right from the get-go; this is a paean to the all-encompassing power of music, stressed with all the weighty might of sonics it sings the virtues of.
A whirlpool of woozy, swirling Beach-House-like phasing, seven-story-high guitar heroics and a vocal so impassioned it could incite fist-pumping in the hand-less, ‘Radio Kids’ is the bullseye point directly equidistant to Hot Fuss-era Killers and Bruce Springsteen at his rabble-rousing best. ‘Anthemic’ is a term bandied about all-too-often in music critique, but it was invented for war-cries such as this.
An early cut from next year’s Hard Love long-player, ‘Radio Kids’ is a sledgehammer of a song that swings for the heartstrings and catches the gut on the way. When Showalter implores “play it, play it loud on the radio”, reaching to crank up the nearest dial becomes a reflex rather than a choice. An evocative accompanying video, directed by Christopher Good, serves to further emphasise the resolute urgency of Showalter’s monolithic sound – an urgency that also requires this track to be bought and consumed as an absolute necessity for the betterment of life.
