REVIEW: Honeyglaze – Real Deal

You’ll often hear amateur music critics like me talking about a band having a ‘quiet evolution’ between albums. In the case of Honeyglaze, though, a ‘loud evolution’ might be a better description. That’s not to say that the band, whose first album dealt largely in sweet melodies and folk-pop sounds, are suddenly coming out with a noise rock sensibility or making their audiences want to head bang at shows. But from the crunching, aggressive guitar sounds that open first track ‘Hide’ it’s clear that Honeyglaze are going to be experimenting with new sounds on their sophomore LP. 

That rings true at various times throughout the record. While ‘Pretty Girls’ isn’t as loud, there’s a glitchy, frantic sound to the music that puts them in new, exciting territory. On the other hand, the lyrics to this one continue previous themes – those of insecurity, of fighting for confidence, of the struggles of youth. ‘Don’t’, though, is the ultimate departure for the band. There’s a real darkness in the bass and guitars, the drums bring a tense atmosphere, and for the first time ever, singer Anouska Sokolow is nowhere near her gentle, soothing self. This song sees her growling threats and screaming the chorus – and she sounds great doing it.

The bite of those songs mentioned does dissipate as the album progresses, only really returning towards the end on title song ‘Real Deal.’ That song is, in essence, a ballad – but the confidence and surety with which the words are delivered give it an edge over some of the other songs here.

Surprisingly, given I was such a big fan of the first album, my problems with this one do come when the band are closer to what they were previously. There are slower, softer moments on this album that work really well – ‘Cold Caller’ being an obvious one. ‘Safety Pins’ also mixes some of the newer boldness in to create a song that feels more daring. And ‘Movies’ ends the album with the kind of song that the band should be closing shows with, an emotional release to say goodbye.

The issue comes with the four songs that fill the gap between ‘Don’t’ and ‘Real Deal.’ I wouldn’t say that any of ‘TMJ’, ‘I Feel It All’, ‘Ghost’, or ‘TV’ are bad songs – all four have their merits and their moments. But when the band have made such an effort to experiment and try new things at parts of Real Deal, it feels disappointing that this run really lacks energy and drive and kind of ends up sucking the excitement out of an album that really seemed to be building something special.

So, it’s maybe a sequencing issue as much as anything. And while you can dismiss such a problem if the songs are still good, it does feel that a bit of tweaking and the addition of at least one faster, more furious song could have taken this album from the good category and into the great. 

Words by Fran Slater