East Midlands rockers Eva Plays Dead have got the look, got the attitude and got the talent but on their new EP it’s not yet apparent if they’ve quite got the tunes or not. The riffs have plenty of meat on the bone, and frontwoman Tiggy Dockertay is clearly a tour-de-force to be reckoned with, with but for the most part the five tracks contained within don’t get much higher than the line marked average.

The opening bombast of ‘Live Again’ is promising but then dips into a half paced chorus that never quite grabs hold of you in the way you’d like it to. Similarly lead single ‘Wonderland’ threatens to spill over into singalong territory but never quite hits the target. That’s not to say it’s missing the board completely; far from it; it’s perhaps just shy of the hook that’ll send it arrowing straight for the bullseye.

All that said, the impact of Eva Plays Dead’s sound is hard to ignore and shuns away from the watered down radio-friendly rock that many of their peers make do with. The guitars are buzz-saw with just the right amount of low-slung sleaze in a classic meeting of rock and punk and are hammered out with no little gusto throughout.

I’m gonna keep it glass half full here and say that far from being the finished article, Eva Plays Dead are an act on the up who are tantalisingly close to finding a chorus that’ll deliver a killer blow and get them closer to the realms of Halestorm than they are now. Stick ’em in the pile marked “ones to watch”.

3/5

‘Sounds of The Written Word’ EP by Eva Plays Dead is out on now on Soundhub Records.

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Words by Rob Fearnley.