What makes a song not work?

An example: listen to Noel Gallagher’s new solo single, and experience a song with ostensibly all the right ingredients which results in an unpalatable dirge.

So it goes – apparently the difference between genius and MOR/FM Rock is very slight indeed.

Songs like Spectre‘s Sister show how wafer-thin that gap is – especially between, say, full-blown My Bloody Valentine pure-noise-throb and Snow Patrol‘s reedy blandness.

Inevitably – and thankfully – Spectres are firmly lodged at the MBV end of that scale, their crushingly dense wall of noise alternately crunchily brittle, then all-encompassingly balmy.

Sister starts with a smash, ends with a bang, and soars through clouds of silvery feedback for three minutes in between.

Spectres have discovered a rich seam of textures and noises with which to carve their sonic shapes, and they have mined it to its fullest.

The danger always present here is that the noise begins to mould the song, and not vice-versa – but Spectres‘ songs are arcing, lucid: essentially pop songs buried under sonic rubble.

Attending their gigs must be like being punched by a wall of sound that has been punched by a wall of sound. Gently heavy.

MORE: soundcloud.com/spectres