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As with the deliberate ambiguity of the record’s title, NewDad are happy for listeners to figure some of the answers out for themselves.
It used to be so goddamn simple.
You wrote some songs. You got signed. You made a record. You had a hit.
You went on Later Jools, then on tour, then you threw some televisions out of hotel bedroom windows. Back then, being a rock star was like falling off a log.
Not so now. The music industry (never the most empathetic of institutions) is now fundamentally a different place to the one where an artist could at least be given space to grow for a couple of years. Nowadays for some the hype cycle lasts for about as long as a trending hashtag.
NewDad are typical but atypical. Originally from Galway but now living in London, schoolfriends Julie Dawson, Sean O’Dowd and Fiachra Parslow see the sharks in the water but have no choice other than to swim with them.
Having released a critically acclaimed debut album in Madra, the ratcheting up of pressure on its follow up wasn’t lost on any of them.
Dawson knows the game has changed, citing her belief that as well as being a musician the majority are forced into the role of influencer too.
Homesickness and job sickness each play their role in Altar, a next chapter that embraces this personal conflict which she says is open in outlook as much to Chappell Roan as slowdive.
It says something about the permeable boundaries which now exist between the pop and non-mainstream worlds that this could even sound possible, but as with the deliberate ambiguity of the record’s title, NewDad are happy for listeners to figure some of the answers out for themselves.
Part of the reason is that like many first works, Madra was a collection which had come through an evolutionary process over their formative years whilst Altar was written in brief spells when they were off the road or in between shows.
During the process, Big Thief and specifically Adrianne Lenker became a key go to.
So..is all this still like, shoegaze then? Well, on the likes of Roobosh, no; the dirty bassline and knife-edge guitar that pin up a tale of rage being blown out are something far more primitive.
As far as that goes, like much of the rest here, there are echoes of Blue Weekend-era Wolf Alice, at least in the invitation to consider the black/white ying/yang sugar/spice contrast.
Where it differs is that notion of not knowing whether to bite or kiss the hand that feeds. On Heavyweight, the reality of getting what you want sinks in, Dawson walking the tightrope of expectation with, “Don’t be cruel / Make sure you’re cool / Be the latest news”.
The ego grip is even more explicit on the brooding Everything I Wanted, elucidated with, “Need something else/Cause what I’m breathing in is toxic”.
If lyrically this a place fully aware of hidden traps, then musically there’s an outwardness and confidence, as emphasised by the metamorphosis of opener Other Side which begins starry-eyed and innocent but finishes as caustic grunge.
There’s subtlety too, the likes of Mr Cold Embrace and closer Something’s Broken both sat in the eye of their respective storms.
That, in some ways, is the essence of rock n’ roll in the twenties, music as much about the perpetrators as those who the audience might identify with.
Altar finds NewDad further from home than ever, but equally making themselves more accessible to a fame they’ve been eying uneasily.
Just don’t expect TVs to start falling out of windows.
