Holland is blasting out the alt-pop gems this year with the likes of Pip Blom’s I Think I’m In Love, and Amber Arcades (spearheaded by Annelotte de Graaf) is the latest band to light the fuse, returning with new EP Cannonball in June. With a brilliant lead single in It Changes getting a lot of love on the radio at the moment, the mini-album release is one to look out for, especially with a successful UK tour supporting Granddaddy in full flight during April 2017.
It comes just a short year after the band’s debut album release, Fading Lines, on Heavenly Recordings, which set down a minor radar marker as a band to look out for, building on an initial eponymous EP back in 2013. Annelotte and team will be back in the UK again in late summer too for a couple of dates, but we’ll be surprised if they don’t add a few more before too long as they start to become more of a regular fixture on the British music scene.
Release date
The Cannonball has been confirmed for a release date of the 2nd June 2017 and it’ll be out on vinyl and digital download with iTunes listing the EP with previews for both of the singles from the recording. However, the EP doesn’t appear to be coming out on CD for some reason, which could be linked Amber Arcades’ relative newcomer status.
Singles
The two tracks that have been put out by the band already are It Changes and Can’t Say That We Tried, and you can take a listen the lead single in the music videos below. Both are pretty impressive, but they’re poles apart with It Changes speeding through with an incredibly catchy chorus, and Can’t Say That We Tried veering more slowly on a bed of reverberating synth notes and sparse garage guitar flicks. You can take a listen to the latter at soundcloud.com/amber-arcades/cant-say-that-we-tried-1.
Amber Arcades, It Changes music video:
Cannonball EP track list:
1. Which Will
2. It Changes
3. Can’t Say That We Tried
4. Wouldn’t Even Know
5. Cannonball
Which Will is a cover of the Nick Drake acoustic classic (take a listen to the original on YouTube) and Wouldn’t Even Know features vocals from Bill Ryder Jones.
First impressions
It Changes is a great opening single to Amber Arcade’s upcoming EP and the recent addition of Can’t Say That We Tried, with its softer and smarter direction, brings a good amount of variation to Cannonball. The air time that the lead single is getting is very well deserved, and if anything it could double and still be a welcome arrival whenever it lands. Hopefully it will lead on to much more of Annelotte de Graaf’s alt-pop shimmer.
