The Organ – Thieves

This posthumous EP is The Organ's swansong, having called time in 2006 on their career as a band which spanned the previous five years. The six songs of stately melancholy contained herein serve as a fitting epitaph.Obvious touchstones include The Smiths - see especially the vocal phrasing and Marr-like guitar on ‘Let The Bells Ring' - and Joy Division, in the sense of taught, fraught emotions, spelled out in lyrics like the evocative "When your fist hit the table you said it was gonna be alright / When your head hit the table that's when I called it a night" from ‘Even In The Night'. This, though, is a band that are very much their own women. Lead singer Katie Sketch brings her own mournful melodic beauty to each track with a compelling vocal that shines on tracks like ‘Don't Be Angry' and only starts to pall slightly on ‘Can You Tell Me One Thing, the weakest track here, when it begins to sound somewhat droney.Much of the lyric content seems to be of the lovelorn and wistful variety. "All that I want was here, but it's gone", they tell us, sorrowfully, and rarely has heartbreak sounded so touching and strangely beautiful. 78%The Organ on Myspace