Words: George Gray, Images: Sofia Irini
It doesn’t take long before the rich and layered rolling guitar of Soot Sprite’s new single Days After Days catches your ear. That’s before Elise Cook’s stripped back vocals come swooping in, beautifully melding to the riff with a classically relaxed shoegaze style.
Starting out as a one woman project with a lo-fi bedroom pop style, the band has evolved to a three piece with Sean Mariner on Bass and Sam Cother on Drums. The resulting Exeter based trio are an exciting prospect, with additions to the likes of Radio X and 6 Music playlists promising signs.
Shoegaze and alt-indie have had a revival recently, the likes of New Dad and Lime Garden lighting up festival stages and igniting a new wave of fans for the genres and Soot Sprite are no different. There’s hope with the new track and upcoming debut album ‘Wield Your Hope Like A Weapon’ they’ll soon cement themselves amongst audiences too.
The track builds nicely, opening with a lone guitar that creates that warm shoegazey ambience before the drums kick in. A backbone for the ebbs and flow of Elise’s ethereal vocals, that at times are left alone. The quality of Elise’s voice shines in her ability to pair alongside band members and also stand out alone, with an echoing catchy quality.
Every time you think Days After Days relaxes the guitar snaps raucously back in, and you’ll be hard pushed to not tap along as the layered riffs build. Its rise and fall emphatically carries the listener through lyrics of self-love and empathy, all with a laid-back indie cadence.
In Elise’s own words “If we have empathy we can have hope, and with hope then change is always possible”. A message that’ll be carried throughout the upcoming album, with inspiration thematically from Rebecca Solnit’s book ‘Hope In The Dark’ and musically from the likes of Sweet Pill.
The result is a sonically crafted track with hope-laden melodies and infectious ardour, the chorus hitting hard every time, re-capturing the listeners attention without fail. With Spring stepping into gear and Summer right around the corner, Days After Days is a perfect tonic for optimism. As it comes to a close, and the song fades it almost paints a picture of the song crackling away on a summer radio.
It’s got me looking forward not only to the sunny days ahead but the new album too, and it’ll certainly be worth the wait to see which direction Soot Sprite take us in next. Until then stay up to date with all about the band HERE, listen to the Days After Days HERE and pre-order the new album HERE!
