Back in 2020 a debut album from a Hull band caught us all by surprise. Bedroom from bdrmm is a stunning debut for any band. Song writing of the highest calibre coupled with a nailed down shoegaze aesthetic across all the tracks. It was that cohesive, seamless listening experience that earned the band plaudit after plaudit. After an eventful three years that has saw then move from their home at Sonic Cathedral to Rock Action (founded by Mogwai’s Stuart Braithwaite), touring with Ride and Mogwai and playing to the biggest venues of their career, they’re back with a new album, I Don’t Know!
‘That difficult second album’; is something you hear often but bdrmm have taken their time. Relentlessly touring, building their fanbase and writing and honing these new songs on the road. Whilst the band who are Ryan Smith (vocals/guitar), Jordan Smith (bass/synth), Joe Vickers (guitar) and Conor Murray (drums) have chosen to record at The Nave, their spiritual home, these songs are a document of a bands journey both literally and figuratively. So, what can we expect from I Don’t Know, here’s what the band have to say.
“We’re still coming from the same place, but the influences have got much broader. A lot of it is just us gaining confidence, and also not wanting to retread old ground. We’d made the guitar album so, we were thinking, ‘What else can we do?’”
“Lyrically everything’s still probably based on things that have happened to me, but I’m writing more ambiguously, so that it can be understood by others in whatever situation they’re going through. I always think the first record feels like one person’s relationship, whereas this is so much broader, and can be interpreted in different ways.”
Album opener ‘Alps’ sets out the bands vision immediately. If you’re here for another shoegaze album then you best buckle in. Ambient electronica reminiscent of Atoms for Peace washes over us. These sounds are transportive creating a visual picture of flying at breakneck speed down an Alpine Road. This is the sound of a band reinventing themselves, fearlessly and with an absolute eye on the prize. The vocal melody weaves around the beats creating this hypnotic atmosphere whilst the bass holds it all down with a solid groove. ‘Alps’ is a very deliberate choice of opener. A statement of intent and has set a very high bar for the rest of the album.
‘Be Careful’ reintroduces the guitars to the album however just check out those drums with that slippery bassline for a minute. Is this a trip hop song we’re experiencing? It is, but with that bdrmm spin to it. Lyrically Smith is offering us a caring warning we should heed.
“I struggled with alcohol during lockdown and it’s a song about realising how we can all act when we’re not in our right minds. You know, it can unleash stuff and it’s not always nice. So ‘be careful of yourself’!”
The washed-out guitars are augmented by some subtle keyboard motifs that offer us a cleaner sound from bdrmm than we have heard from them so far. This album is going to keep me on my toes.
Back in 2021 I had the pleasure of meeting the band after their Glasgow show at the Hug & Pint, at my first post covid show. I was really excited about a new track they had played for us and eagerly asked Ryan its name. He said it was called ‘Picky New’ and they were really enjoying playing it.
Fast forward two years and ‘Picky New’ has bloomed into the utterly monumental ‘It’s Just a Bit of Blood’. The Hail to the Thief era Radiohead influence here is undeniable. The band lean into it and as the gentle picked out atmospheric intro erupts into a wall of urgent noise the wind is knocked out your chest. The band take their time laying the foundation for the soaring chorus that is to follow. The line “Where do you get off?” becoming a refrain that crowds will be singing back at them. Their time on tour with Ride and Mogwai playing venues like the Ally Pally have given bdrmm a taste for the epic and I believe we’re only just seeing that first green shoots of that on this album.
The metered rhythm of ‘We Fall Apart’ follows, all brooding and understated. Capturing the zeitgeist in those three simple words. The song again leans into that Radiohead influence, the claustrophobia is reminiscent of the song ‘There There’ but more defined, more immediate. The motorik drums and sparse arrangement capture that melancholy perfectly and create an atmosphere that captures your attention and doesn’t let go. The false stop again will lend itself to the big stages that bdrmm will undoubtedly be asked to play. Utterly beguiling and all consuming as the song builds to its epic conclusion.
The band let themselves explore further on the ambient instrumental, ‘Advertisement One’. Driven by a piano motif and hypnotic drone the band weave various sounds, tones and textures to create what I would call a natural soundscape. To me this is the sound of a summer meadow viewed from above. You travel through it at speed, the music getting gentler as you fly higher and higher. The vocal samples, synth stabs, guitar strums and electro drums are used in just the right places at just the right time to make your journey and experience like no other.
It’s not often I take the time to really call out the drummer in a band for their role in a songs sound. In ‘Hidden Cinema; Murray brings his A-game. In the opening verse it’s like he’s playing around the song not in the song. What he’s doing shouldn’t logically work but, by God, it does. It’s a tired phrase but, he really is the beating heart of this song.
Again, the band use that droning sound with chiming, picked out guitar to form the skeleton the melody hangs on. Smiths’ breathy delivery is deeply affecting and when swathed in the electronica of the chorus is elevated to something really quite special.
‘Pulling Stitches’ is the closest we have to a song that bridges the gap between that fuzzy shoegaze sound of the first album and the new, cleaner, more intricate lines of I Don’t Know. The bass driven crystalline verses are countered by the distorted guitars of the choruses. Even when the guitars reach that fuzzed out sound of old, they still manged to be clearly defined in the mix and they never overwhelm the rest of the band. It’s testament to how far bdrmm have come.
This album closes on something new for the band. The aptly titled ‘A Final Movement’ comes in on hushed strings that were written specially for this song by Jordan Smith, notably his first-time arranging strings. This is no shrinking violet of a song at over eight minutes in length. It demands your attention and you’re more than happy to capitulate to its ebbs and flows. It’s a gentle end to an equally gentle and well-defined album.
I Don’t Know is a wonderful surprise of an album. It catches you off guard from it’s opening second and then it has you locked in until the final note. It would’ve been so easy for the band to produce another Bedroom continuing that shoegaze sound. Instead, they looked inwards and said let’s try something different. Let’s move our sound on and try new things, explore our influences and bring them to bear. It’s so obvious that their time on larger stages has opened their eyes and ears to what a song can be. I’m really excited to hear these songs live, which I’ll be doing shortly in Glasgow. I can only imagine they’ll sound massive. Kudos to the band for taking the road less travelled, it’s certainly paid off. On that point I’ll let Ryan have the last word.
“We’ve always followed our instincts and done what felt right. Surely, if you’re in a band, that’s the most important thing you should do.”
I Don’t Know is out on June 30th on Rock Action. You can grab your copy over on Bandcamp or from your favourite indie retailer.
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