The follow up to last year’s full length Elysian Skies – a record as spectacularly beautiful as its name suggests – and the first body of work from the band featuring new members Cat Rowland and Marcus Gooda, The Stitches EP is just the sound of a band that’s impossible not to adore. A tall claim indeed, but existing fans of the band will surely agree and attest to such a sentiment. As proven across the band’s three records thus far, Lakes paddle in the luscious waters of modern contemporary emo in the key of post and math rock. It’s a fluid sound, warm, tranquil and inviting, and far from being host to some of the dark pollutants lingering in the current global emo scene. The Stitches EP, the band’s new three-track offering, is another dip into the soothing pool of organic emo the band inhabit.
Lead single ‘Stitches’ effortlessly attracts one in from the get go. Compiling all of the traits that make Lakes so appealing, it’s tracks like these that just embodies what makes this band just so effortlessly brilliant Straddling the thin line between colossally anthemic and humbly intricate, it’s just impossible to not be charmed by the delicate interplay, velvet textures and the dual-vocal chemistry between Rowland and Roberto Cappellina that embodies the band’s approach to denying common genre convention. The following ‘Nothing Surprises’ also reinforces such elements. Whilst it may be a song about languishing whilst the watching fall apart amidst the end of days, the track just sounds breezy and weightless despite it’s heavy subject matter. It just radiant with a senses of cathartic tenderness and earnestness in an age where such traits are becoming abandoned for hardened stoicism.
But perhaps it’s the final of the three tracks that really proves how brilliant this band and EP are. Featuring UK math rock legend Henry Tremain of TTNG, it’s this almost urgent acoustic ballad that presents the band’s most endearing characteristics; their sense of authentic charm. With their intricate taking cues from a plethora of genres, Lakes take the verdant whimsy, bright-eyed excitement and unspoiled innocence of youth and present it for age where ratites are in low supply. Honestly, it’s no wonder why Tremain makes an appearance here – like TTNG before them, Lakes are the most promising candidate to become future ambassadors of the UK emo/math scene, and if their next record is as brilliant as this EP, such a claim will be undisputable.