Much ado was made over a handful of tropically-tinged aural snapshots when
Theme Park first burst out of the interweb traps with A Mountain We Love and Wax a little while back. While they may have been mere masters, they sounded more than ready for mass consumption: wistful and wiry, Miles Haughton's vox were at once ingenuous and intuitive. Lips were licked. Now almost chapped, the aforementioned tracks have finally been given a full release on Transgressive imprint
paradYse Records, and it's for this reason that The Lexington is tonight rammed to the rafters. Martinis and seven inches are frantically clinked and stashed respectively, as the eve assumes an air of "I was there": hacks and Huw Stephens anxiously await the debut London show from the quartet that are to contemporary indie genre-muddling what Lilt has been and always will be to the cornershop softdrink selection, Marcus Haughton emerging in a rather spectacular Planet Hollywood-does-hawaiian shirt short-sleeve number. Blustering through the sanguine samples of opener A Mountain We Love, Oscar Manthorpe's buxom bass lines anchor perhaps the troupe's most effervescent effort. The following track too is equally estival, and similarly befitting given the blistering climes within. It's sand-between-the-toes tranquility, and as reverb-laden guitars glide past one another you can practically hear the coconuts clack. As bottom end duties are transferred to Louis Bhose stage-left, the segueing songs assimilate a Bombay Bicycle Club buoyancy, before a string snaps, a fabled, if clichéd auspicious omen if ever there were one. Wax seems sparse, and subsequently stark in contrast to all that precedes it, and as their fourth song of the soirée, only one succeeds it as they just about "flesh out about half an hour" as anticipated. When
we first spoke with Theme Park, Miles aspired to whip up a little motion within the venue, although feared gentle head nodding may be all they were in for. Seems as though a certain hope has already materialised, and more realised dreams will surely follow.
