The Xcerts - Hold on to Your Heart (2018)

We want to make people feel like anything is possible whilst listening to this record’ is a bold statement for anyone to make, but there’s no band better equipped to ensure this comes true than The Xcerts. 2014’s ‘There is Only You’ saw the trio cement their position as one of the UK’s best bands and their reputation and popularity continued to soar as more people found the album and connected with it – especially in the live setting. When ‘Feels Like Falling in Love’, the lead single from ‘Hold On to Your Heart’, was released to huge acclaim last July, the entire big tent at 2000 Trees was bouncing and singing along to it just a week later. It hinted at great things to come…

Following the euphoria of the closing title track of the last album, the opener to ‘Hold on to Your Heart’ finds Murray Macleod pondering the other side of the coin. An examination of the bleak place you find yourself in when someone you saw your future with cuts it off, the gentle piano-led ballad has Murray talking about how his scars will remain and contains both a callback to ‘In the Cold Wind We Smile’ favorite ‘Crisis in the Slow Lane’ (‘You found love and I found loss, that’s just the way it goes’) and a forthright sincerity that Craig Finn of The Hold Steady would be proud of: ‘Ain’t life beautiful? Wasted dreams are scattered out in the street while the boys and girls get drunk. Yo, Freddie, it’s 2am and I’m surrounded by love but all I see is dark’. Although the subject matter is downbeat, there’s a glimmer of hope shining through in the build-up of the music and it perfectly sets up the next run of three songs…

If any band manages to match a run of ‘Daydream’, ‘Feels Like Falling in Love’ and ‘First Kiss Feeling’ this year, they will deserve all the high-fives imaginable. You’ll have had the first two of these on repeat for almost half a year and if you went to a show on the autumn tour, you may well have found yourself humming THAT melody to ‘First Kiss Feeling’ over and over again in the months since. ‘Daydream’ is a Tom Petty-esque burst of Americana punk rock that finds Murray contrasting feelings of emptiness with thoughts of reconciliation: ‘Everything went black, there was no coming back for me’: ‘It was a daydream in my head’. Much like ‘Shaking in the Water’, ‘Feels Like Falling in Love’ loses none of its vigour even on countless relistens. The band said they want this record to sound something akin to a John Hughes soundtrack with a modern twist and nowhere is this more prominent than on this tantalising combination of early Killers and Simple Minds. It’s a bombastically proud pop song that has Murray admitting his faults: ‘I keep saying your name under my breath, I keep making the same mistake over and over again, I keep searching for that first kiss feeling.’ There are huge hooks, delicious synths and a drum-led breakdown that will work perfectly on the bigger stages the band are set to grace this summer and beyond.