Album review: Fleeting Persuasion unveil their new gothic-tinged album ‘Will They Come Back’ – a collection of dark yearning tracks from the underworld.

Masters of the dark arts of post punk atmospheric music, Fleeting Persuasion today unveil the new album ‘Will They Come Back’. It’s a powerful dark epistle highlighted by arching ambulant bass, jangling and scything guitars with distant dreamy vocals that seemingly hang in the ether.

Fleeting Persuasion is driven by James Harrison (guitar/vocals) who wrote and recorded with producer Josh Whitehead during the pandemic years and later with ex-Sounds Like Sunset drummer Tobey Doctor (drums/bass). Harrison says of the album:

There’s a collection of songs I’ve been working on with Tobey. He’s got quite the producer’s brain and so the drums, bass lines and production have been his vision. I haven’t needed much convincing as we both love similar sounds and textures! There’s lots of colour and textures on the album as a whole. That’s what we love. It’s real swimming in your ears, head between the speaker stacks, stuff.  You know, blurry guitars, melodic lines and all that.

Opening track ‘Find A Way’ is a dark brooding piece with an insistent fuzzy shoegaze blur and vocals buried deep in the mix – haunting and ghostly.

A muscular bass spine with the genetic code of New Order or The Cure drives the shimmering second track ‘Etched’ with Harrison’s urgent vocals recall the passion and vitality of Richard Butler from The Psychedelic Furs. But the overall sound is something unique and bold: a wall of sparkling instrumentation and a thread of yearning as Harrison sings of the indelible nature of memory:

It’s etched right here
Pulls me back
I don’t want to get close
I don’t want to let go

It’s a driving muscular, innervating sound that is further enhanced by the brilliant stop motion video accompanying the song – animated and directed by Adam Walsh. Harrison says of the result:

Adam wrote a story inspired by the song, so to see his visions come to life has been unreal!

It’s a brilliantly executed, immersive video that serves the effervescent, radiant sounds:

‘Faded’ rumbles and prowls like a caged, enraged predator while the sweet vocals bubble underneath the maelstrom.

The slightly discordant guitars and fuzzy thumping bass create a visceral blast of noise that eviscerates the soul, while the distant melodies haunt the background and create a salve that tempers the heat and the light, providing an ethereal filagree to the onslaught.

It’s extremely exhilarating pulse quickening stuff, as if someone threw My Bloody Valentine in a blender and added a dash of Cocteau Twins and The Cure before blitzing for 24 hours and then detonating for good measure:

‘Recall’ eases slightly on the brakes with its dappling guitars and yearning urgent layered vocals to the fore as the thundering expressive bass ebbs and flows under the surface while ‘Recess Blues’ sets off with a similar pace, Harrison’s vocals rasping and sombre, a matching bass riff renting the atmosphere. ‘Still Dark’ antithetically casts a brighter ray of sunshine with its splashing guitars and quickened pace with vocals redolent of Dinosaur Jnr. The growling bass enters a little later, providing a liquid flow underneath the current.

‘Rewind’ enters the arena with a rumbling prowling insistent thunder while the yearning melodic vocals lend a lighter touch.

‘Slipped’ eases into the stratosphere with a delicious frisson of jangling guitars coasting above an ambulant bass, a driving percussion and Harrison’s voice an urging, earnest calming oil on a heaving seas. There is very much an early The Cure sparseness and melodic thrust, with a refrigerated edge that sends shivers up the spine.

‘Slipped’ is a studied piece of sonic architecture: a vast cathedral filled with longing and desire with a touch of regret, cleverly captured in a title that gives a conclusion to the warning in the lyrics :

Got too close to the edge
Started to forget
They said we’d slip
Lost your grip

Tobey and Harrison say of the track:

We liked the idea of a sense of space and independence in times of such saturation. ‘Slipped’ was always going to be the next release after ‘Etched’ and we’re very excited to share another track from the album we plan to release soon.

The track is accompanied by a suitably atmospheric video collated from the film ‘Docks of New York’, adding a poignant edge and a graceful majesty to the music with its monochromatic enigmatic scenes:

Final track ‘In A Rip’ sparkles and shimmers with pattering drums and jangling guitars with the trademark melancholy.

‘Will They Come Back’ is out today and available to download and stream here and though the link below.

Fleeting Persuasion will be taking their battering ram sounds to the stage – details below.
Friday March 1st @ Moshpit, Sydney (Album Launch) Tickets
Saturday March 16th (arvo) @ Last Chance Bar, Melbourne (Album Launch) Tickets