From the ‘Gold Silver Diamond’ of Tuesday’s Generationals to the simple ‘Gold and Silver’ of Flagship. At this rate we’ll be featuring Spandau Ballet by the weekend, but in the meantime it’s remarkably easy to enjoy the ride offered by today’s North Carolina quintet. The single in question is the most recent from the alt-rockers’ deep and brooding self-titled debut, and for a track which already shone musically on the 2013 LP, you have to applaud the music video’s director for managing to magnify that exact same power in his work. It’s a strong accompaniment to an already exemplary piece of music, and the near six-minute track sums up to a T what Flagship are all about.
Throughout the band’s eponymous debut and even before that, everything has come down to the quintet’s knack for captivating an audience. The decision to stretch the album out to a full hour in length is an ambitious one and there are points where the band struggle to keep the momentum flowing but split the record into two and you have a recipe for success. Maybe, in hindsight, Flagship would have benefited from doing that themselves but regardless, it doesn’t stop you enjoying the gradual, expertly precise rise and fall of ‘Hollywood Underwater’, or the stories told by tracks like ‘Break the Sky’. The full ensemble is one of the most well-tuned mechanisms you could hope for a band to be, and it ensures that every subsequent repeat play (and there will be a lot of them) remains just as impactful, just as memorable as the first time the crescendos hit your ears.
Even before the album release, the Blackbush EP was a resounding success in introducing the outfit as the band members grew out of the shells of their previous projects and really tore into life as a new act. ‘Backseat’ sounds more of a foray into Killers territory than any of the band’s more recent efforts, and there certainly is the sense of a group still finding their place sound-wise. ‘Still I Wait’ is something of a middle ground, while ‘The Knife’ is Flagship at their most insatiably anthemic. Certainly, the Carolina outfit are capable of slipping into a number of different disguises, but time is beginning to reveal the true face of Flagship. There does come the occasional reminder that the band are still very much finding their feet in the musical world, but in the meantime what matters is the music, and the music is pretty damn good.
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