Sky Larkin are about as 'indie' as it's humanly possible for a band to be. As with bed-fellows such as Johnny Foreigner and Los Campesinos the Leeds based 3 piece deal exclusively in short, precise stabs of energetic, tongue-in-cheek punk-pop music which is as indebted to Abba as it is to Black Flag and the Pixies. Everything from the Technicolor artwork to the bands unconventional good looks and the brash guitar tones to the schizophrenic stop-stop arrangement screams credibility so it's not hard to believe the band have built up a sizeable fan-base in the 12 months since their debut album dropped last year.
Musically it's a tight, focused affair packed with hooks. Casio keyboards vie for space between dense, fuzz bass and intricate guitars. Singer Kate Harkin shares more than a slight resemblance to the Joy Formidable's Ritzy Bryan but where that bands dark sound is off-set by the cutsey nature of the vocals here it just reinforces the blinding brightness of the snappy guitars and easy-flowing melodies. This is hardly a knock though, in fact it really works in the Larkin's favour especially on future indie-disco dance-floor fillers such as 'Tiny Heist' and the wonky but delightful 'Shade By Shade'.
It's a deceptively eclectic record too with the sparse 'ATM' really creeping out of left field on a bed of distant, clattering guitar and brittle percussion. The organ led dirge of 'Anjelica Huston' (You know your dealing with a quirky band when they name a song after an ageing Hollywood actress) meanwhile is a complex wonder with a tangible push and pull between an explosive guitar led chorus and a meandering verse which wraps a subtle, delicate piano line around Harkin's repetitive but urgent pleas.
Kaleide is an impressive record fit to bursting with intelligent pop hooks and left-field quirks and Sky Larkin certainly have a USP in their diminutive singer. Whether there's enough there to keep them ahead of the pack for long is anyones guess though.
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