It can at times verge on the impossible to tell in our post-physical, PR-saturated music world just how authentic the buzz around ‘that’ new band really is. It’s hard not to question who exactly is whipping up the latest frenzy: label, blogger, friends in the industry or, just perhaps, the band themselves?
Vida, a quintet from Alloa in eastern Scotland, seem to be the real deal, however.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qoWwXcxsKE?
Strident from the surprise radio and streaming success of their debut single ‘Fade Away’, Masquerade – the first EP from the Scots – comes as an all-important entry for a group with clear potential, an opportunity to act upon a spark of intrigue and reveal a few more cards from their deck.
And as first impressions go, very few of late can surely register quite as highly as the opening few moments of ‘Moloko Vellocet’. Unleashing a veritable thunderball of energy from the get-go, the attraction of Vida is soon obvious in the opener alone – this is an act who know how to write a tune that, in its full-throttle drumbeat and rattling guitars overlaid with electronic elements, wholeheartedly pleads to be heard live.
The other thing that probably strikes you upon listening to this EP are that the influences – namely, but not necessarily exclusively, those of 1990s Manchester – are there for all see. Nobody here is pretending they haven’t taken a cue or two from Brown, Gallagher and co.
And no one has to, because when the songwriting shows as much promise as ‘When I Call’, a shoegazey number that hits the sweet spots throughout as it roves from verse to refrain, the music really does start to do all the talking for itself.
The titular track ‘Masquerade’, perhaps the one of the three with the most to owe to Britpop influences, provides another glimpse of what this bunch appear to be capable of in its loud, entreating chorus that evokes the best of the musical period it resembles.
So the clincher? Vida remain a band unsigned, fresh onto the scene and are just now starting to venture south of the border. The conclusion to draw from this short and sweet trio of solid potential hits thus seems a rather glaring one; go and catch these songs live now.
‘Masquerade’ is available worldwide now via Spotify and iTunes.
Catch Vida on their UK tour now.
Words by Benedict Tetzlaff – Deas