Courtesy Tip Top Recordings
Yes,
Forest is a band of boys from England. No, they are nothing like
One Direction. The young Cambridge five-piece self-produced their
Sweetcure EP fresh out of college, in the interest of introducing their feel-good take on garage rock to the world on their own terms.
Their sound is nothing if not referential, with a fine assortment of familiar sounds both new and old -- the reverberant, distorted guitar and bass recall that of
Sonic Youth or
My Bloody Valentine, and lead songwriter and vocalist Henry Barraclough's delivery is not unlike
Arctic Monkeys frontman
Alex Turner.
"All of us have been making music since we met at age 14, though Hugo joined us later when we decided we wanted a fuller sound, with more guitar and vocals, and that's when we formed as Forest around a year and a half ago," Barraclough tells Spinner. "We worked on our
Sweetcure EP as a way to get away from our end of high school exams, and managed to get it done before our gap year started, which has now let us focus on our music. We've been likened to
Dinosaur Jr.,
Pavement and various shoegaze bands like My Bloody Valentine and Ride, though given the way most of us listen to music, our influences really come from a jumble of songs rather than a specific set of bands that we love."