Temples are an indie rock band hailing from Kettering,
Northamptonshire in England. Formed as a basement studio project in 2012
by guitarist/vocalist James Bagshaw and bassist Thomas Warmsley,
Temples recorded and released their first single that November. About
that same time, the duo tapped fellow Kettering residents Sam Toms and
Adam Smith to take up drum and keyboard duties respectively, so they
could start playing live sets. After a hectic 2013 consisting of
recording sessions and live shows opening for popular UK acts such as
Suede and The Vaccines, Temples released their debut album Sun Structures in February 2014.
An amazing first effort, Sun Structures is
easily one of the strongest debuts from an indie rock band in recent
memory. I would put it on a level with Vampire Weekend's self titled
album, or Arcade Fire's Funeral. Temples is not the first time
Bagshaw and Warmsley have collaborated, having previously been bandmates
in Andy Croft's Northampton based outfit The Moons. Prior to that,
Bagshaw also fronted a group called Sukie that had a number on hit on
the UK Indie Chart with the single "Pink-A-Pade". It's evident the
band's previous experiences had a hand in their ability to craft a truly
engaging album here.
Often tagged as neo-psychedelic rock,
Temples combines melody driven 60′s revivalist experimental rock with
classically crafted pop-rock sensibilities. Imagine the Beatles and MGMT
came together to record an album and you wouldn't be far off from what
Bagshaw and crew have laid to wax here. Don't let the psychedelic label
scare you off. While Temples makes use of some tropes of the genre, such
as dreamy vocals, non-typical rock instrumentation (in the form of
harp, flute and sitar effects delivered via keyboard), and a healthy
amount of reverb, they also manage to avoid a lot of the genre's
pitfalls. Almost all of the songs are tightly orchestrated affairs of
about 5 minutes or less in length. There is no excessive jamming, no
breakdowns in song structure, or difficult to listen to passages that
mar some of the more experimental psychedelic albums throughout history.
Sure, there are a few meandering guitar/keyboard interludes throughout,
but the beat remains constant and there is never an apparent lack of
focus. While clocking in at roughly 53 minutes, the twelve tracks that
make up Sun Structures seem to go by much faster.
Released
on Heavenly Recordings in the UK (home of The Head and the Heart, and
the collaborative work of Mark Lanegan and Duke Garwood), and picked up
by Fat Possum Records for North American distribution, Sun Structures
has been gaining a lot of press attention since its release. Temples
has also acquired a couple of famous and vocal fans during their
relatively short existence in the form of Johnny Marr (The Smiths) and
Noel Gallagher (Oasis) who have both championed Temples as the best new
band in Britain. Noel Gallagher has even gone so far as to vocally
criticize BBC Radio One for a relative lack of airplay supporting Sun Structures.
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