Dan Hillier
Since dropping their debut EP A Long Night Down To Calagary, Sheffield’s Since Torino have enjoyed quite a few reasons to celebrate. Performing at Dot to Dot Festival and Regtown for one, playing alongside US scene heavyweights Ogbert the Nerd for instance, selling out their own headliners for example. But what makes such feats just so impressive is the fact that the debut EP aforementioned only released just nine months ago. Now Since Torino are back with their second EP of the year in the form of Reunion Dinner.
For those uninitiated, Since Torino aren’t necessarily a band that can be easily summarised by stringing genre tags together and be done with it. Sure, they’re emo adjacent and certainly a part of the fertile Yorkshire scene that’s also host to other brilliant acts like Slash Fiction, Jumper Boy and Pale Sailor. But it would be far more fitting to compare them to moods or even environments. Since Torino are the sound of staring outside condescend windows in late autumn, cosy yet wistful. The sound of the sunset silently kissing the crisp winter horizon. The sound of The National if they where really, really into American Football. A Long Night Down To Calagary presented all this wonderfully, but it’s Reunion Dinner that fleshes out and expands this sound.
reunion dinner by since torino
Whereas the EP that came before this channeled a sense of wintery emotional lethargy, this new endeavour feels warm and inviting. Of course, the cold catharsis and achingly slow warm beauty remains, but here it feels bolstered and even more-so inviting. If anything, it’s like Since Torino have only added more thread and layers to the bundle of blankets that form the textures of their sound. Whilst the immediate midwestern influence of opener ‘Truth’ sets the table of Reunion Dinner, it’s the slowcore inspired delivery of what comes next that just makes this record so inviting and affable. ‘Oh, Angelo’ and the absolutely wonderful title track serve as the main courses of this record, the two being emotionally hearty yet musically chilly offerings that contain all the delicately prepared ingredients commonly used by acts such as Sparky Deathcap and others of their ilk.
But truly what makes all of this fantastic is the EP’s intricacy. The simmering melting pot of emo, slowcore and alt-country may be the most immediately recognisable element of Reunion Dinner, but much like the EP that came before, it’s the herbs and spices that complete this record and make it worth savouring. Be it the math rock percussion permeating the record, the interplay of strings, horns and flutes on the title track or the sleepy-eyed reverb on ‘The Next Life’, every moment of this record feels host to intricate dynamism that only completes the amalgamation of genres that make the final sound of this EP.
It’s this in turn that makes it so remarkable. Reunion Dinner resonates a level of inspired innovation that little bands of this stature possess. After all, a band’s first two EPs or so are typically reserved for finding one’s feet, not nailing a unique sound and essentially mastering it’s delivery or so. But that’s what this band have done here; they’ve captured the essence of quiet melancholic comfort in autumnal hues wonderfully. Turnstile summer is over, now is the time of Since Torino fall.