It’s not exactly been an uneventful year or so for Anchor Lane, despite not spending much of it on the road. After their collaboration with Lo Rays on a new version of “Sycophant Disorder”, a run of dates in June which culminated in their triumphant sold-out show at Glasgow’s King Tut’s (all the good venues were booked, apparently), the Glasgow trio shouldered another personnel change with the departure of guitarist Lawrence O’Brien, his shoes filled by Connor Trail for their October and November dates. And then they decided to keep him. As well as release a live album of their Tut’s show and launch their own Patreon.
Now, they’ve been beavering away in the studio, working on new music, reconvening with Bruce Rintoul, who masterminded Call This a Reality? “Six Foot, Six Pack, Sigma” may be a bit of a wordy title when, “I Don’t Have Another Soul to Pour” aside, most of their song titles are three words maximum. But the instant this new single starts, it doesn’t exactly kick down the door. No, it just levels the entire building with a riff that’s as filthy as a teenager’s Internet search history.
Indeed, this is a gritty dose of altrock, continuing on from where the second album left off, picking up on the harder tracks and injecting them with a whole load of steroids. Full of peaks and valleys, it’s Anchor Lane at their dynamic best. It’s heavier, chunkier, and the pop sheen has been sanded back. It’s still there in the background in its soaring chorus which is just begging for an audience to singalong with vocalist Conor Gaffney, his words are laced with despair and frustration in both its calmer moments and his screams.
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Not only that, but you can also hear the venom in the guitar work from Conor and Connor, the pair of them combining to create a sonic battering ram, downhill at 100mph. There’s moments when Graeme Newbury’s drums stop, and when they return, they smash you over the head, delivered with expert precision and enough force to knock the wind out of your lungs. Graeme works well around the guitars in the verses, creating a monster of a groove.
Lyrically, it sneers at the brand of toxic masculinity peddled by the likes of Andrew Tate and anyone daft enough to subscribe to his teachings whilst also shining a light on the anxiety and angst in men it causes by believing that specific brand of bullshit. Moreover, the band wear their Glaswegian roots proudly with the inclusion of “bams” mingling with drunks.
“Six Foot, Six Pack, Sigma” is everything you’d expect from Anchor Lane – high-octane guitars, drums battered to within an inch of their life, dynamics, sections built for crowd participation and it has something to say all wrapped up in a modern sound which builds on what came before. If this is what the future looks like for the Glaswegian trio, then it’s looking incredibly promising.
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“Six Foot, Six Pack, Sigma” is out now
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