Solar Eyes are an indie dance two-piece from Birmingham’s Hall Green. With a sound that binds together psychedelic guitars, foot stomping beats and trippy lyrics, their sophomore album Live Freaky! Die Freaky! exudes a wild-eyed exuberance that echoes the 1990s’ marrying of electronic dance music and floppy-haired indie tunes.
Their opening salvo of singles may hark back to a time when indie kids finally plucked up the courage to get onto the dancefloor and shake a tailfeather, but they are tasty and engaging with a spirit of their own. “Time Waits for No One” and “Set the Night on Fire” are especially intoxicating and aim straight for the hips. “Murdering Hippies” is, likewise lively and hypnotic and is obviously much indebted to the shadow of Charles Manson’s infamous Family – but through the lens of Quentin Tarantino’s cinematic fantasy Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
Live Freaky! Die Freaky! isn’t all just throwbacks to a time when the Happy Mondays, Pop Will Eat Itself and the Soup Dragons regularly invaded the charts with their narcotically-enhanced sounds though. “I See the Sun” has something of a Cowboy Noir sound to it, while “An Eagle Flies Alone” is a wide-screen cinematic ride into the sunset with a side order of Ennio Morricone buried deep in its production. “A Couple of Kisses” and “Your Love is Like a Drug” meanwhile, are romantic strum-a-longs that add further flavours to the party.
Things do occasionally get a bit generic with Solar Eyes’ revelling in drug-induced fun and games – and “Speedball Lovers” is especially a bit of a thin gruel. However, they’ve already been awarded that much-prized indie-dance accolade of providing the backing music to the weekly montage of goals and other highlights on BBC’s Match of the Day, so their career plan is clearly taking them in the direction of the places that they want to go.
