Love Inks - E.S.P.

From Austin, Texas comes this trio that have surprised all that thought they deserved a listen at this year’s SXSW – and no mistake was made. Love Inks are easily set to be one of the new big names to come, as their delicate blend of minimalism, dream-pop and rock collides.

E.S.P. is first and foremost a shockingly short album. Its ten songs that rarely make it over the three-minutes mark deliver a wonderful album in a speedy format, with catchy tunes and infectious lyrics.

If you think about it it’s hardly original stuff this. It’s not ground-breaking and to be honest it sounds all too familiar from the first second, but it’s exactly their ability to mix and blend well-known genres and styles to make them work in a fantastic way. You could call them the American answer to The xx, although at times they might remind you of some of The Stroke´s most calm and minimalistic songs, and then again there are hints of dream-pop here and there.

Calm and slow-playing guitars, mellow and slightly echoing vocals – this is Love Inks. They don’t need much to impress with tracks such as the infuriatingly infectious Blackeye, working its wonders from the first second and boasting its shortness and simplicity with its mere 1:57 length.

The whole record follows the same formula, and here we can see that the limited length of each track actually renders the record always fresh and new. And so with Too Wild we see again what Love Inks can do, by repeating the same sentence “you’re too wild” over and over again, and yet,  we can only think about the lush dream-pop atmosphere – in no time you will find yourself singing along to the track.

E.S.P. closes the curtains with Too Late, a track that screams to be used by Sofia Coppola in her next film – again, its minimalism and dream-pop-esque vocals simply work surprisingly well and need not a further effort from the trio to impress. Brilliant.