“Intrinsic Grey” sets the tone. The first song on Evans the Death’s second album is a glorious trainwreck, a stuttering, amped-up gem that regularly collapses under the weight of its own feedback. This is calamity-packed pop music, storm and stress with a melody, with guitars careening into each other and a rhythm section that lurches like a multi-car pile-up down on the highway.
Evans the Death is a four-piece pop band from London that finds beauty within noise. Naturally they’re on Slumberland in the States—they sidle up just fine alongside Black Tambourine or Boyracer. Their strongest asset is Katherine Whitaker’s voice, which is powerful but tender, joyous and carefree on one song and heartbreakingly sad on the next. Her voice is like a jar of honey on top of a stack of busted amps.
“Intrinsic Grey” isn’t a false start—the band loves a nice din. “Terrified” almost buries a bouncy organ riff and danceable rhythm under sheets of guitar fuzz. The dirge-like “Don’t Laugh at My Angry Face” seems to coat every instrument with distortion, from bass to guitars to Whitaker’s keyboards. Imagine Les Rallizes Denudes if they wrote a pop duet in English that peaks just a little bit lower in the red than most of their stuff.
Still, this is a pop band. The record’s highlights come on such meat-and-potatoes indie-pop songs as “Sledgehammer” and “Bad Year,” where the band’s love of noise works alongside their knack for melody and catchy riffs to produce timeless pop songs. It comes to a head on “Clean Up,” which is like a two-minute cathedral of guitar riffs and frantic drumming with Whitaker singing for forgiveness. It’s a song that would work on college radio or lovelorn indie rock mixtapes from any era. Tough but sugary, Expect Delays is an unhindered blast.