Listening to ‘Stay Young’, the second album from Dundee’s The Mirror Trap, it’s hard not to be impressed by their passion. It runs like a live wire through the record’s eleven songs and speaks of their desire to live fully, freely and honestly. Built on the foundations of their enthusiastic but unfocussed debut ‘The Last Great Melodrama’ and follow-up EP ‘The Invisible Hand’, the band has looked long and hard at the world around them and, not particularly liking what they see, have poured it all out in the studio.
Kicking off with the furious ‘American Dreams’ and its fantastic opening couplet “Tell me do you mean a single word you say / Or are you just leaking words”, singer Gary Moore makes his position crystal clear: “I would rather die as a failure…
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…but a trier”. ‘Toys’ pours scorn on a generation wasting away playing computer games before ‘Killing Time’ sums up the mood with the lines “The tragedy of our lives / Is that we don’t get to spend enough time / Doing those things that remind us all that we’re human”. This unsatisfactory state of affairs is poignantly illustrated through the lovers unable to orgasm, forced instead to kill time as they have nothing else to do.
While it could be expected that such anger and frustration would give rise to aggressive, difficult music, The Mirror Trap have done precisely the opposite. Guitarists Mikey J McFarane and Paul Markie alongside Ben Doherty on bass and drummer Paul Reilly make a glorious, uplifting racket. Arrangements are interesting and well considered with melodies that worm their way into the brain and refuse to leave. From the twitchy rhythms of ‘Westminster Ghost Story’ to the swirling, melancholic synths of ‘Bell Street’, the band effortlessly add weight and beauty to Moore’s vocals. ‘Stay Young’ culminates with a reworked version of ‘Future Lionheart’, a call to arms that first appeared on ‘The Visible Hand’ EP. That the album struggles to maintain its momentum after this faultless three and a half minutes is understandable and in no way detracts from The Mirror Trap’s achievement.
By standing up and refusing to accept the status quo, these five lads from Dundee are giving voice to a generation dealing with an uncertain future and the knowledge that they are certain to be worse off than their parents.
They deserve to be heard.
01. American Dreams (2:20)
02. Toys (3:15)
03. Killing Time (3:06)
04. Waves (3:29)
05. Pigeon Chest (3:42)
06. Dreamers (4:13)
07. Westminster Ghost Story (2:52)
08. Bell Street (3:55)
09. Future Lionheart (4:08)
10. Goodnight Stallion (3:46)
11. Fades (4:18)