Album Review: Atlas Genius - When It Was Now

Atlas who? A month ago, it was an acceptable question to ask around these parts. Despite hailing from our backyard (Adelaide, to be precise), Atlas Genius have already blown up overseas. Tens of thousands of downloads, taste-making American blogs and radio stations going apeshit for their music, and some epic SXSW buzz, however, mean that as of April 2013, 'Atlas who' just ain't gonna cut it.

The band's sound across the 11 tracks on When It Was Now is incredibly diverse, yet it's unsurprising that the indie folks of Hype Machine, We Are Hunted and SiriusXM Alt Nation started going bananas over the band a year ago. Lead single Trojans encapsulates everything that the band do well, ebbing and flowing from verse to chorus to bridge, maintaining a bouncy tempo and setting up lead singer Keith Jeffery's restrained yet upbeat vocals to sit front and centre.

From there, When It Was Now goes from acoustic moments (the beginning of Through The Glass) to the Ou Est Le Swimming Pool-inspired flavours of If So. There are moments like On A Day where tribal drums will have feet tapping and heads bopping, and plenty of tunes that will find themselves on beer commercials next summer as the soundtrack to pretty young hipsters on rooftops having a 'Good Time'.

It's catchy, it's poppy, and the band are backed up by one of the biggest record labels in the world. You might not have heard them on your local (or national) radio station, but since SXSW put the band on the Australian music press' radar, you can expect to hear a lot more of them. The name is Atlas Genius – remember it.