South Wales’ 25 Yard Screamer continue to display their concept album prowess with their latest offering, which completes satisfyingly a trilogy of excellence that began with the brooding, atmospheric Cassandra (2007) and continued with its darker, more aggressive follow-up, 2011’s Until All Are One. Part three tells the deeply introverted story of Jennifer, a writer ‘locked in her own world of expectation and lost words’.
Set free from her self-imposed isolation by a visitor from her childhood, she embarks on a perilous and often disturbing journey to rediscover her past.
Nick James’ sombre, heavily vibrato’d vocals give an atmosphere of simmering remorse to songs such as Wilderness and The Empty Ship; Always There is charged with almost overbearing amounts of emotion; Just Myself And My Keys provides a bleak but satisfying climax to proceedings.
A lyric sheet might have enhanced the album’s appeal, but such is the sense of there being something so disturbing afoot here you may not really have wanted to read it.
It may not quite topple Cassandra – 25YS’s crowning glory – but Something That Serves is still an engrossing achievement.
