Dublin rockers Bouts were kind enough to draw my attention to their free EP (out now) towards the end of last week. I try to listen to as many of these things as I can, but perhaps 8 times out of 10 I’m not quite impressed enough to ever get around to writing about the bands. There’s just not enough time in the day to do everything. I’m not sure Bouts are quite the finished product, but the way the guitars play off each other is really quite impressive. They promote themselves as hype free, and I’d have to agree, I follow Irish music (especially in Dublin) really quite closely and I’d never heard of them before last week. I can imagine that whole loud/ quiet things causing quite a buzz live (give ‘Barbs’ a listen if you want a very quick example of what I’m on about – second track on the EP). They seem to fall nicely between accessible pop rock and having a real vicious edge.The driving riffs on ‘The Drift’ are probably the highlight of this lot for me, but it’s impressively lacking in filler on the EP. I’ll get around to listening to the album over the course of the week.
If you’re feeling energetic, there’s a late night show at Whelan’s on the 29th of October (upstairs, free in). If not, download an entire free album and free EP and sit at home with the volume up, below: