Amusement Parks On Fire – Our Goal To Realise
Amusement Parks On Fire are back with their first material for over 8 years and it is a welcome return. We don’t usually cover singles at [sic] Magazine but we we’re not absolutists about anything musical. Whether shoegaze, power-pop or art-rock it has always been tough to bracket the Nottingham act. I hear a good deal of Swervedriver in their music but the harmonies put me in mind of a beefed-up Teenage Fanclub. Our Goal To Realise is the first Amusement Parks On Fire release since 2010’s Road Eyes. Like the Fannies (and Road Eyes beforehand), the music still has a wisp of a West Coast vibe buried beneath the pedal array. I like it a lot. For me this song somehow crystalizes those very first moments of shoegazing, those first baby steps as the new genre hauled itself out of that primordial soup of C86 jangle pop.
Flip side ‘Black Beacon Sound’ is a pounding, Doppler-inducing workout ideally suited to b-side experimentation. In all honesty neither song is likely to break them new fans but ‘Our Goal To Realise’ is a worthy addition to their canon. If their ‘goal’ was to remind us who they are and what they’re capable of, that A side certainly realizes it, wobbling and distorting like My Bloody Valentine (before Loveless consumed them)
Amusement Parks On Fire are back, ladies and gentlemen. With another release (An Archaea )slated, 2018 could get fun.