Album Review: Empty Pools - Saturn Reruns

Bristol's Empty Pools strive for balanced intricate signature changes with a variety of dark pop conventions in debut,Saturn Reruns, and almost get there. Leah Pritchard's pop-inflected vocals stand at odds with the instrumental muscularity, and a heady amalgam of '90s genre tropes permeate the record – the frantic syncopated cuts that underscore the indie rhythms of Vanderbilt Cup, the subtle, sonorous lilt of acoustics on Slack Tide, the seething post-punk groove Exploded View. These sonic skips and hops can mean jarring continuity issues, but this collection of intricate noise-pop songs shows a lot of promise.