There’s something to be said for the days when a music fan’s taste was only as broad as the selection in their neighbourhood record shop. For one thing, a band could spend a decade or more making an album, safe in the knowledge that their fans would still be there, sifting through the same CD racks in the same stores.
In 2013, on the other hand, a two-year hiatus is a death wish; 12 months away from the stage is a life sentence; and successful comebacks are exclusively reserved for big league stars. Bands in 2013 are not Patrick Duffy in 1986. They cannot emerge from the shower and find everything exactly how they left it.
Luckily, Dublin/Dundalk pop rockers Heritage Centre, who have released their debut album Alright, Check It Out after almost three years out of the limelight, have bucked this trend. Buoyoed by a handful of radio-friendly guitar pop anthems, they’ve managed to steer themselves right back into playlists of the Irish music-hunting public – ironically enough, with a sound straight out of that time when record shops ruled the world.
Calling to mind ‘Buddy Holly’-era Weezer, ‘Burn Baby Burn’-era Ash and ‘Philosophy’-era Ben Folds Five, the merry quintet appear to divide their loyalties between cookie cutter pop and rough-edged rock, bestowing each song with a heady, girl group-appropriate chorus. The lyrics, meanwhile, don’t need any roughing up. In a buttery, skyscraping croon, vocalist Conal McIntyre calmly calls one offending muse a “superstitious bitch” and tells another to “get over yourself.” Thus, it suddenly becomes clear that the key to creating a Heritage Centre is taking two wildly contrasting ideas and gleefully smushing them together.
Take, for example, ‘Oldest Friend’, part bitter ballad, part feelgood garage pop jam, or ‘Stolen It Twice’, a veritable head-banger with a sugary sweet hook. Tongue-in-cheek tales of friendship and romance gone wrong are pitted against charging drums on ‘You Are Something’, while ‘Stars’ teams aspirational subject matter with some supersized riffs and an atypically distorted vocal from McIntyre.
If it all sounds too good to be true, it’s because I’ve neglected to mention the sole, glaring problem with Alright, Check It Out – the fact that the sheer catchiness of singles ‘The Boss’ and ‘Oldest Friend’ are never rivaled among the other nine tracks. There is a great consolation prize, however. Elsewhere on the LP, you’ll find some really fetching examples of vintage-sounding, singalong indie rock. Well worth the wait.