Moving away from the more commercial sound of ‘Feel’, ‘Madness’ and ‘Gossip’ doesn’t mean that it’s lost all such sensibilities; tracks like ‘Agree To Disagree’ and ‘Blood Lines’ are littered with hooks, soulful melodies and electronic elements. The difference on this record though, is that the offset of screaming, metalcore guitar riffs and post-hardcore song structure overpowers the overall pop vibe and pushes it further into moshpit territory. What they’ve done on ‘How It Feels To Be Lost’ is to replicate the formula of early Sirens songs like ‘If I’m James Dean, You’re Audrey Hepburn’ by marrying 90s r&b, soul and pop influences with heavy as balls instrumentation. 

‘Ghost’ and ‘PS Missing You’ are so akin to that 2010/2011 sound that it wouldn’t be surprising if they were written at the time and just didn’t make the final cut for album track listing. ‘Another Nightmare’ on the other hand is heavily imbued in effects that might feel a little further removed, however when you zoom out and look at the album as a whole, it works really well. 

Recorded at MDDN Studios, Good Charlotte’s Madden twins provided more than just a space for SWS to lay down tracks. Benji stepped up for vocal duties on ‘Never Enough’ and the result is pretty special. Their voices work well together, as it did when Quinn featured on Good Charlotte’s ‘Keep Swinging’, making this a particularly strong track that’ll most likely become a fan favourite. 

‘How It Feels To Be Lost’ is anything but. It’s a well rounded album that tells the story of a band who have not only progressed over time, but who have tried different sounds and techniques, melting them all down before forging something quintessentially them.

RENETTE VAN DER MERWE

Lead track ‘Loose Change’ is a little raw but at the core is a great energy, an impressive build up in the bridge, and a pretty decent vocal melody. It would be easy to dismiss it as just another punk-rock track with a gruff vocal thrown in for good measure but this isn’t a-typical of the handful of bands from this scene and it’s a refreshing change. It’s backed up by ‘Catsayemate’ which is slightly quicker to start, settles into a nice groove in the verses and chorus, and then chugs impatiently through another excellent bridge.

It’s these moments, three quarters through a track, that Janowski really hit their stride and if they can sustain this over the course of their next EP then there’s no reason why they can’t make a name for themselves. Their brand of punk-rock is definitely more of a nod to US acts like Hot Water Music and The Menzingers here but there’s a great audience for that in the UK right now and very few bands doing it well. Time will tell!

TOM BECK

Touché Amoré fire off with a song that’s been a staple part of their live set for the best part of a year, ‘Gravity, Metaphorically’, and is concrete evidence that they’re, still, only getting better. After a battering first half, the band breaks to a lonesome guitar, before building to a tearing crescendo to finish with the pounding lyric “At Least I Tried”. The production is not quite the clean-cut affair of their previous output, but does have a certain rawness alluding to the desperation the track portrays.

Where some outside of the die-hard screamo community might have criticised PBTT for a lack of vocal variation in the past, on this track, ‘Hiding’, they’ve got all of that by the bucket-load. From the first clean singing of Kyle Durfey’s tender lyrics and quivering voice, right the way through to clenched screams and mixtures of everything in between. The rest of the band support him solidly and overall it seems like exactly the right direction they needed to take. It’s hard to see them doing it any better, would it be cheeky to hope they do?
This has got to be one of the split realease of the year. One which showcases two artists refining their craft even further than before, offering you two songs which could arguably be their most emotionally hard-hitting recordings to date.

JAMES FOX