Railcard's 'Two Steps At A Time' Sounds Like a Record You Already Own and Forgot About
Calling this a debut album is technically correct and slightly absurd. Railcard’s members have been making British indie pop since before most of the genre’s reference points were reference points, and Two Steps At A Time plays like the record they had already rehearsed in their heads.
The Sonic Breakdown
The Production & Mix
The Low-End: This is a guitar-pop record that leaves the bottom deliberately light, which is the tradition it comes from — the rhythm section sits back so the guitars can chime instead of crunch. Rachel Love, credited by both God Is In The TV and Spectral Nights as ex-Dolly Mixture, and Peter Momtchiloff, of Heavenly, are on the front line; Ian Button rounds out the core. The label is Skep Wax, run by Amelia Fletcher and Rob Pursey of Heavenly, which tells you most of what you need to know about the house sound.
The Spatial Dynamics: The real production choice is Allison Thomson, credited by God Is In The TV on trumpet and keyboards. A trumpet in a jangle-pop mix is either a gimmick or a second voice, and here it is the latter — it takes the lines a harmony vocal would have taken and gives the arrangements air the guitars can’t provide on their own.
Standout Performance
Track two, spelled “1962 Forever” on the band’s own tracklist, is where the songwriting shows its hand — a title that could be nostalgic and a tune that flatly refuses to be. God Is In The TV’s Ed Jupp wrote the line that gets at it best: “Their debut album feels like it should have been in your collection for years.”
Why It’s Certified
Because three separate outlets reviewed it in release week and none of them hedged. Jupp again, on the whole thing: “There’s so many great tunes here…there’s a timelessness about this album that isn’t just about gold standard indie pop, but great music in general.” Spectral Nights’ Ryan Barham: “Railcard continue to be on the fast track to indie-pop heaven.” And Silent Radio got at why the band exists at all: “The shared history, the same pop references, the parallel lives… Railcard had to happen.”
There is a Dinked Edition and a cream vinyl variant. If you are the sort of person this record is for, you already know which one you want.