Following two successful years on the road supporting 2014’s breakout Lunatic, Kongos returned home in late 2015 with a lot of fresh ideas. The brothers Kongos - Johnny, Jesse, Dylan, and Danny - grew up in a musical family. Their dad, John Kongos, landed multiple chart hits in the seventies (including ‘He’s Gonna Step On You Again’ which was reworked by Happy Mondays in 1990)

Egomaniac is an interesting album and it's clear, from the first play through, that each of the songs was originally roughly composed by a different band member, before coming together and finely crafting each song. Because of this the track listing is extremely important. It's hard to take one track out of the mix or shuffle them around without losing something.

The album contains 13 songs (43 min, 50 sec) and there's a little flavour of Paul Simon running through tracks like 'The World Would Run Better'. It's an upbeat Blues Pop album (if you can imagine such a thing) that should help you live out the last days of the summer in style.

Highlights include the hypnotic 'Autocorrect'; an interesting take on 'Birds Do It'; the catchy 'Repeat After Me'; and the album closer 'If You Could'.

This is an LP that you'll either love from the first play through or slowly grow to embrace. There's very little chance of you not enjoying it - not unless you really despise Indie Pop.

8

Nick Smithson