“We don’t want to be the ‘next’ anyone,” Amber Run bassist Tom Sperring has said. “We want to have people down the line compared to us.” Given the Nottingham five-piece’s devotion to predictable chord sequences and climactic guitar wails, Sperring may not be far off – not in the sense that Amber Run make deeply inventive music that renders them incomparable to others, but rather that their brand of big-chorus, anthemic pop-rock is likely to be aped by other young bands in years to come. Their debut album, beautifully produced by Mike Crossey (whose past credits include albums by Foals, the Kooks and the 1975), is unoriginal yet sweetly palatable. With Noah’s Mumford & Sons-like vocal melodies and the wisps of Bastille’s fist-pumping pop on single Just My Soul Responding, Amber Run position themselves as yet another British band aiming for mainstream success while maintaining a legitimising rockstar edge. They’re not incomparable yet, but certainly have the major-label chops to be popular.
