Priestgate – ‘One Shade Darker’ album review: A bittersweet look at home
Have you ever wanted to get out of your sleepy hometown? Was there nothing going on there? Was it nowhere near anything resembling a major city, or even worse, within a stone’s throw of something tantalising and just out of reach? Priestgate knows how you feel: I myself have never been to the town of Driffield in East Yorkshire, England, but based on how Priestgate sing about it, I’m not missing much.
The British five-piece goth/post-pop outfit has yet to produce a full-length LP, but they are returning with the next best thing: a four-track EP entitled One Shade Darker. Last year, the band collected a few of their singles into another four-song EP entitled Eyes Closed for the Winter. Now, the group has returned for another go around the bend with four tracks that celebrate, condemn, and pontificate about their shared hometown.
“It’s about Driffield – whether it be missing it, loving it or hating it… it’s about home,” singer Rob Schofield explains in a statement. “Where we’re from doesn’t really have a creative community, there’s some good joiners – just no bands. It’s about seeing the same old stuff growing up, I’d never really left the place all that much before the band started. I had it in my head that I’d end up making coffins with my dad.”
He’s not exaggerating, by the way: Schofield’s dad really is a coffin maker. Remember that next time you die in Driffield. Kicking off with the moody tones of ‘Some Things Never Change’, One Shade Darker constantly splits the difference between wanting to get the party started and crying in the corner of the room. Part sunny pop-rock, part dancefloor-ready electro-rock, and part doom-laden goth-rock, One Shade Darker shows that there are a million different variations of darkness.
‘Some Things Never Change’ pairs disco drum beats with a heavy slice of post-punk despair. Schofield’s signature baritone rises to a slightly higher pitch than it normally does, seemingly energised by the band’s rabid dancefloor rhythms. Although Schofield remains pessimistic in his lyrics, ‘Some Things Never Change’ at least toys with the idea that there could possibly be a brighter future ahead for the band, if not the town that they reside in.
For those of you interested in comparing Priestgate to other artists who share a similar sound or worldview, that’s not what One Shade Darker is about. It’s a little too easy in place – and I certainly have found myself holding back, trying not to make the easy comparisons – but One Shade Darker does help hone in on the signature sound that Priestgate is whittling away at, slowly but surely.
“It’s our attempt at pushing the sound to another place, but we never sit down and say ‘let’s make this sound like X artist or Y artist’ – we write each song then see if they all work together afterwards,” Schofield says about the new EP. “It’s just how we are as a band; we’ve always found ourselves wanting to see what will happen next. It’ll always sound like us to a certain degree, maybe just with a different haircut if you will.”
‘White Shirt’ plays more into the band’s poppy side, with twinkling guitar lines and a bunch of major chords bringing sunshine to the otherwise cloudy atmosphere of the EP. The song doesn’t make Driffield sound all that bad… at least until you listen to Schofield’s lyrics. “This town, it’s a desert now / Tell me why it is that we’re so proud / We’ll get out, get out somehow / And if we don’t, who’s counting down?” That’s a harsh way to say that no one cares one way or another whether you make it or not, but Priestgate expertly disguises that possible despair in their most potent pop song to date.
Every time that I think the band are going to make a full turn back into the doom-and-gloom, they come right back with a jangle pop track, crafting counterpoint. That’s exactly what ‘Into the Blue’ is: a delightfully light tune that glosses over some true bummers hidden in the lyrics. That’s the style that Priestgate leans into heavily on One Shade Darker: the tunes might sound up and cheery, but once the lyrics hit your brain, you understand why the band named the EP the way that they did.
As the final strains of ‘Lucifer’ take over, it’s enough to make you wonder if the band are being just a touch dramatic by calling upon the guidance of the devil himself. If anything, ‘Lucifer’ has the message of not pretending that life is anything other than a big pile of shit. It’s refreshing, especially once the double guitar attack of Connor Bingham and Isaac Ellis takes over the track. As Schofield belts out “Oh Lucifer, I’m trying”, the song becomes weirdly uplifting for a song about Hell.
Toeing the line between mopey darkness and more optimistic highs is what Priestgate are angling to do. Throughout One Shade Darker, the band mostly succeeds. The balance doesn’t seem to be quite as refined as it could (and probably will) be, but all the elements are in place for the band to succeed. When I hear a Priestgate song, I don’t really think about anyone else, which is the biggest compliment that I can give them. They’re unique enough to go places other than Driffield, that’s for sure.
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