Resolve - Talk In Code

Somewhere along the line the term “pop music” has become a dirty word. I remember when guitar bands blazed an exploratory trail through pop realms as interesting as any keyboard wielding dance groover. But in the modern age the genre seems to be associated with music industry production lines, dance routines and TV talent shows. That’s why you need bands like Talk In Code. For Talk In Code is a pop band in the very best sense of the word, one that can wander from pastoral pop pathways to incisive indie cool to rocked out riffs to dance floor infused beats and back again without breaking into a sweat.

Resolve is a wonderful collection of songs from a band who have stuck to their guns, a band who have refused to follow fad or fashion and who have waited for the audience to catch on to them rather than gone chasing favours. But longevity isn’t enough you need the songs to back it up, thankfully they do…in spades.

There is an immediacy and infectiousness about songs such as Keep Safe, a clubland shimmer that shows their lighter side but this lightness is balanced by the slow grace, subtle intricacies and hidden depths of songs like Oxygen. Tides is that stadium fist in the air encore, Disguise a glitchy alt-dance shuffle and Satellite is a slice of deft sonic weaves that seems to merely frame natural atmospherics with sound.

Pop music has always been a battle between the transiences of fashion and the quest for mass appeal. Talk In Code should revel in their ability to write throw away pop songs that people will want to listen to forever. How cool is that? - Dave Franklin