Intwine

“Happy?” reached listeners in 2003, appearing around the group’s self-titled debut. The punctuation suits a song whose melodic accessibility does not guarantee reassurance. The voice can draw a line out until its edge begins to show, giving a familiar verse-and-chorus construction an unusually unsettled centre.

The early recordings also include “Way Out” and “Get Outta My Head”. They make the band easier to hear as an ensemble, with the rhythm section giving the vocal a solid frame and the guitar parts choosing where to leave air. A large refrain has more impact when the surrounding passages have not already spent all the available energy.

Perfect followed in 2004, bringing “Cruel Man” into the catalogue. The song’s darker rhythmic pull makes a useful contrast with “Happy?”, while preserving the recognisable combination of a strong tune and a vocal that refuses to sound entirely comfortable inside it.

Pyrrhic Victory in 2006 and Kingdom of Contradiction in 2009 widened the album history. Together, those records give the band more room than a memory of two singles allows. The central attraction remains the relationship between melody and abrasion. Intwine could make an accessible song feel emotionally difficult without dismantling its shape, letting the vocal roughness and the weight of the instruments reveal something that a tidier performance might have concealed.