Expect Delays

Following up their excellent 2012 self-titled debut, Evans the Death return now with their second album ''Expect Delays.'' Recorded again with producer Rory Atwell, the album bristles with an underlying tension and veers from rip-roaring noise to quiet contemplation, underpinned by Katherine Whitaker's extraordinary voice. Still barely out of their teens, there's a tremendous sense across ''Expect Delays'' of a band coming into their own, honing a plethora of influences to make a sound that is uniquely them. Each song on the album has a different feel to it: some of them are melodic and pretty; some of them heavy and dissonant; and some of them are, to quote guitarist Dan Moss, ''a bit strange''. While retaining the postpunk and 90s alt-rock inspired elements that peppered their debut, the music is more expressive, heavier and more experimental, and the lyrics more nuanced, the sense of despair leavened by sharp wordplay and humor. The unsettling undercurrent of melancholy and hopelessness that pervades the record has its roots in the last three years, spent eking out an existence on the poverty line in Cameron's Britain, leaving them with a succession of minimum-wage jobs and unemployment benefits interviews. As guitarist Dan Moss relates, the album is about ''being in London and feeling hopeless and a bit lost. Not having any money, relationships falling apart, things just not connecting or going anywhere and getting absolutely wasted all the time.'' More ambitious and focused than their previous record, whilst sacrificing none of their spontaneity and vitality, ''Expect Delays'' is a supremely inventive and intelligently crafted album from a band who have suffered for their art, and used that experience to inform and nourish their work. Expect no more delays, Evans the Death have arrived.