Brighton four-piece Fear of Men have an enigmatic habit of adorning their releases with photos that look straight out of the ancient art wing of a museum. Their first two seven inch-singles, respectively, featured busts of Nefertiti and the Virgin Mary, and their inaugural EP, Early Fragments, starred a half-disintegrated sculpture of the Greco-Roman variety. The cover of their debut LP, above, continues in that neoclassical vein, making it tempting to point out that their music contains a similar emphasis on proportion and crisp, clean lines. If you can't hear it in the elemental melodicism of "Waterfall" and it's downtempo sonic preface, "Alta," them maybe you can feel it in the affectless clarity of singer Jess Weiss' voice, like an especially wholesome and dewey-cheeked alter ego of The Cranberries' Dolores O'Riordan. Loom is out April 22nd via Kanine Records. Read our Gen F profile for more on Fear of Men.
Stream: Fear of Men, "Alta/Waterfall"