Album review: Dividing The Line – At Least It’s Not Light

Over the last twelve months, being sent a PR about some fresh-faced British group with an abstract band-name and a couple of those side-parting long-hair barnets among their line-up photo has become synonymous with a sense of disappointment – there are just so many talented young bands out there cranking out overpolished and unoriginal copies of last year’s “alternative” chart successes. In the service of honesty, I must report that Dividing The Line initially triggered that flinch instinct; in the service of further honesty, I must report that they didn’t deserve my cynicism. Their début album At Least It’s Not Light is actually a pretty decent listen.

Things begin in “The Rush Over the Cliff” with a nicely spacious slow build-up, and then layers of echoing guitar get slipped on top, followed by a smoothly melodic bassline. Then there’s a snap out to almost nothing, followed by a blast into a floaty and epic soundscape a la Circa Survive and the current crop of Glaswegian post-hardcore kids. Then we get a sampled political voice-over (or rather voice-under) decrying the Iraq “liberation”, before – completely unexpectedly – everything goes riffy-shouty-clenchy-fisty for the last bit of the track. There’s a lot of potential and variety lurking in that opener – but can Dividing The Line keep it up over a full album?

“Ticking Boxes” disobeys its own name and reverses the formula of its predecessor, starting with the hardcore bellowing and switching to the more mellow passages for contrast. But there’s some weird little plinky keyboard bits in there, too, plus haunting clean vocals, some rolling tom-work from the drums, and echoed arpeggios that put me in mind of the more hectic moments of Minus The Bear. This is good stuff.

And I’m very pleased to report that the rest of At Least It’s Not Light delivers on the promise of those first few tunes. Dividing The Line have a sound that’s contemporary and distinctive at once, and it’s good to hear a younger outfit juxtaposing the epic pop melodics with heavier material without resorting to tired songwriting clichés and obvious chart-pandering. Each tune has disparate elements playing off against one another in perfect balance, assembled carefully with an ear for durability. “Weight of an Echo”, for example, has hooks that’ll lodge in your brainmeat straight off the bat, but subsequent listens reveal more detail, new ideas; album closer “Why the Whales Came” deploys comedown-mangled keyboard patches, seemingly stolen from Enter Shikari’s hardcases while they shared a tour-bus and vigorously re-chiselled into something more contemplative, more thoughtful. I’ve gotten so used to albums by young bands that bore me before finishing the first listen that something as immediately engaging as At Least It’s Not Light feels like getting an early Christmas present. A British post-hardcore band with their own sound and songs? We’ll have some more of that, please.

At Least It’s Not Light isn’t perfect, but you don’t expect perfection of a young band’s début on a small label (unless you enjoy being disappointed on a regular basis, perhaps). A few of the tracks here sag in the middle or drag themselves out too far at the ends, the clean vocals tend toward a very similar set of melodic patterns in every song, and the production is a little too busy – more separation in the soundfield would make for a more absorbing listen. But for me to be sat here making niggling little comments like this about Dividing The Line is enough to indicate to me that they’ve got the important bits covered – a strong contemporary sound, good songwriting and solid musicianship. If there’s any justice in the world, they’ll quickly rise to prominence in the currently clone-ridden UK post-hardcore circuit… and you can give them a hand by buying their record or going to see ‘em play if they pass through your town, OK?