Post-punk darlings confound expectations and promise more on debut.

Everything is a fusion these days. Whether it’s the latest Japanese-Italian eatery, this year's vital post-punk meets trance record, or Uber Boat. When everything is seen as a subversion of what came before, originality can get lost in the desire to view art through the prism of its origins. For East London’s Folly Group, this is taken as a literal challenge rather than a vague term to dress over the furniture.

Despite this being their debut full-length, Folly Group are no fresh-faced younglings. A steady slew of singles and EP’s, beginning in earnest with the inclusion of single ‘Fashionista' on Slow Dance’s ‘20 compilation, has contributed to four years worth of expectation building up to Down There!. Such a trajectory often finds bands zeroing in on the sound that sparked their ascendency, with the full debut release acting as a victory lap before the unenviable task of forging a career beyond the hype.

Folly Group waste no time in dealing with such back patting. In short, they’ve gone big. 

The first few seconds of opener ‘Big Ground’ sets out their stall. Boomed gang vocals are coupled with agitated percussion and morose intimate confessions from drummer and vocalist Sean Harper. The track builds excellently over the following three minutes, as we hear Folly Group mould the energy of underground dance, the anxiety of post-punk and the ear worming anthemic heart of big indie.

Fellow single ‘Strange Neighbour’ is composed of the same composite parts, brought together by an infectious energy reminiscent of Foals’ Antidotes in all the best ways. ‘East Flat Crows’ adopts the same principles but taken down a broodier road, culminating in an ending that manages to feel both cacophonous and intimately tense all at once. These tracks showcase Folly Group’s fusion at its most finessed, and you can’t help but feel just how fun such tracks would sound bursting from the rusty PA systems of the intimate London venues where the group cut their teeth. 

The ambition shown on Down There! is, understandably, not fully realised on every track. The flipping between styles, whilst creating a unique and well-compacted whole on the aforementioned songs, can be jarring on occasion. The claustrophobic rhythms and vocals that dominate the opening of ‘Freeze’ and ‘New Feature’ promise an exciting build which is undermined by reverbed passages that distract from the inherent tension at the heart of the songs.

Single ‘Pressure Pad’ flirts with the same pitfalls, with spiky gang vocals that anticipate chaos being intermittently lost in the wider instrumentation. The nature of Folly Group’s ambition makes such hit-and-miss instances more excusable than with a record that plays safe within the boundaries of its genre. It’s atypical, arresting, and as a result disjointed in places, but even the uneven moments offer great promise for what is to come.

Down There! never settles. As soon as you’ve adjusted to a particular sound and theme, everything’s already skidded off in a different direction. Whilst this inevitably means some transitional segments are not fully realised, it does give a window into the bright future that lies in wait for Folly Group. There are too many captivating nuggets to ignore, and enough arresting flavours to suggest tantalising things from the collective when these fusions are finessed in the future.