Review | Heroes In Hiding – Curtains

The Last Mixed Tape reviews Curtains, the debut album from indie outfit Heroes In Hiding.

It’s not often that I am surprised by a record, and when it happens it’s always a welcome event. I had come into Curtains expecting a competent debut from Heroes In Hiding, but I ended up getting a lot more from the album than I had initially brought into it.

Indeed ‘Hospital’, the opening track on Curtains, is in and of itself a curious gem within the Irish indie-rock milieu. Big sing-a-long choruses and Two Door Cinema Club-esque guitar melodies are offset by post-rock syncopated rhythms and punctuations of found-sound, bringing the song’s central near-death narrative to life with moments of clarity and confusion. From the very beginning of Curtains, you feel there’s more beneath the surface of Heroes in Hiding’s music than meets the eye.

This contortion of expectation and creation of tension is further developed in the fuzzing noise beat of ‘The Riddle’, whilst the atmospheric repose and compelling rhythm of ‘Trouble’ adds a touch of beauty to the bang and clatter of Curtains overarching sound (as well as providing the album’s most striking vocal). With each track Heroes In Hiding find a new and interesting way to convey the dark themes that hide behind the pop sensibilities of their songwriting. This is key to Curtains success.

And so it goes, Curtains turned my own perception of Heroes In Hiding on its head and now I’m hooked. Delivering a record filled with thematic weight and a large depth of field, the band take indie-rock genre expectations and throw them out the window, resulting in a dramatic first outing from the four-piece.

Rating: 9/10

Curtains by Heroes in Hiding is out now.