British indie rock sensation Escapists can trace their origins to when Simon Glancy (vocals) relocated to London to concentrate on his songwriting, and as soon as he moved he asked the only musician friend he knew to help him record his musical ideas, Oil Court (guitar). Court then quickly recruited his friend, composer Max Perryment to play bass. And as the story goes, the trio spent a week of intensive songwriting sessions before deciding that they had enough musical and creative simpatico to continue collaborating together. Court’s former schoolmate Any Walsh (drums) was recruited to finalize the band’s lineup, and the newly formed quartet began writing and recording material inspired by Arcade Fire, The National and Broken Social Scene.
The quartet’s debut single received airplay from XFM‘s John Kennedy and within that year, they were touring with Imagine Dragons and played sets at Reading and Leeds Festivals. Continuing to build upon the buzz they received nationally, the quartet spent 2013 writing and recording the material that would comprise their 2014 debut, Only Bodies, which was released to critical praise from the blogosphere.
Over the past year or so, the band has reportedly gone through a change in sonic direction with their sound inching towards dance-floor-leaning post-punk. “Pyramid Scheme,” the first single off the band’s Eat You Alive possesses enormous, anthemic hooks, shimmering and angular guitar chords, thundering drumming, sinuous bass lines, and swooningly plaintive vocals. Structurally speaking there are some playful changes in tempo in a song that sounds as though its indebted to the likes of U2, Editors, The Killers, New Order and others.
Certainly, with such an enormous hooks and a dance-friendly sound, I think we’ll be hearing quite a bit from them over the next few months.