Phantom Band, The - Fears Trending [CD]

If you've followed The Phantom Band throughout their career you'll be starting to appreciate that feast will often follow famine: just as two wildly singular, diverse albums in Checkmate Savage and The Wants sprung up between 2009 and 2010, preceding a period of prolonged quiet (solo projects notwithstanding), so the group's critically acclaimed third album - last year's Strange Friend - is hotly pursued by its exotic, anagrammatical sibling, Fears Trending. "Maybe it's the evil twin of Strange Friend," comments guitarist Duncan Marquiss. "They're stranger friends, oddball vestiges and hybrids." Chief vocalist Rick Anthony agrees, pointing out that although Fears Trending merely came about as an anagram of their third record’s title, its connotations ring true, with a greater focus on themes of online isolation that they'd pawed at previously. "The reference is obviously there," Marquiss explains. "Maybe it reflects our wariness of communications technology just now - which paradoxically seem to alienate people from themselves. We're all swamped with information so I question whether the band would necessarily want to add to the clickstream."