Red Vanilla – Days of Grey (2024)
The four-piece alt-rock band, Red Vanilla has just dropped their new EP, Days of Grey. At seven songs, Days of Grey sounds like the confident album of a veteran band that is experiencing a creative explosion, not the debut EP of some fresh-scrubbed kids hailing from Dundee, Scotland. (Check out their Instagram, they’re freaking adorable!)
Producer Kieran Smith saw the band’s vision for the material and filled it in brilliantly. According to frontwoman Anna, “We asked him to produce [the EP] like a modern metal record as we love that sound and that’s what he specialises in.” Inspired by 90s-era rock and Britpop, Smith’s production subverts what otherwise might be a little too obvious. The result is a set of anthemic rockers anchored by melancholy ballads in a cushion of sound that allows for layered guitars (Anna and George), foundational bass lines (Sam), soaring vocals (Anna again), and a pretty active drummer (Lucas – and no, the promo material didn’t include last names).
The opening song, ‘Embers’, has a musical nonchalance and wistful beauty that sets the tone for the rest of the EP if not the pace. Anna’s vocals carry a beautiful and interesting melody over a spartan arrangement until the bridge where the melody fades to the background while layers of guitars envelope the empty space. When the spell is broken by the don’t-judge-me anthem ‘Outside In’ it’s with a nudge, not a slap, and the cheap angst that might accompany such a tune is wonderfully absent.
Throughout Days of Grey, Red Vanilla covers a lot of ground while Anna approaches nearly every song with honesty, by turns disarming and morose but that rarely oversteps into a strident tone. ‘All These Better Things’ is a statement of dedication to the band’s purpose with a nod to the Foo Fighters while ‘The Know How’ is an unabashed tribute to Wolf Alice’s Ellie Rowsell. The beautiful and spare ‘Velvet’ feels like a twin of ‘Embers’ and calls back to the opening tone of the album (the sudden burst-out chorus notwithstanding).
The mini-opus ‘Detach’ closes the EP with its demented-circus guitar melody that turns Days of Grey’s charming (if sometimes brooding) subtext dark and nightmarish, leaving the listener with a held breath as the final chord fades. (I would swear on a Bible they buried the Slack App’s Knock Brush notification sound at about the one-minute, 21-second mark. It startles me every time). Hearing them open up ‘Detach’ on their Crowded Flat session from a couple of years ago gives every indication that this band is going to be great to see live when they hit the road.
Find out more about Red Vanilla on their Facebook, Instagram and Spotify.
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