Back in February of last year, I wrote my first proper review for a student-run newsletter I’d been asked to contribute something to. The record I chose was one I had bought after having read James Ould’s review a couple of weeks earlier and had absolutely fallen in love with, by this exciting new band Beware of Safety. My review was filled with all manner of half-hearted humour and facile attempts at witty descriptions, with such gems as “post-rock with more gonads than Auntie Gertrude” inducing particularly painful cringes over a year and a half later.

In that time I like to kid myself that I have become at least slightly more mature and confident as a reviewer and so it feels rather fitting now to have been assigned to review Beware of Safety’s sophomore release (and first full-length). This is not only because one would hope that increased maturity and confidence might be the hallmarks of a band’s second record, but also because it might hopefully give me the chance to do a band for whom I have great expectations a touch more justice than my first pitiful attempt.

It is Curtains is not a record which had ever before struck me as displaying any lack of maturity or confidence, and to be fair I still don’t think that to say as much would be completely true. However, upon first getting dogs and playing it immediately after having listened to the whole of It is Curtains, the change is fairly astounding. There is no overbearing and easy-to-pinpoint way in which BoS have changed – the guitars and FX pedals have not been swapped for ukuleles and penny whistles and their sound remains ostensibly post-rock – but a multitude of small alterations and an apparent change of approach make for an incredible difference.

Unforgettable yet subtle melodies reverberate throughout the entirety of the album, which for me is where many similarly-inclined bands often fall down. With the more derivative of post-rock acts, there seems to be an inclination towards pretty harmonies in the quiet sections and plain loud noises (ie; crashing cymbals, scuzzy guitars and general flailing) in the more climactic sections, which unfortunately comes with a dearth of memorable melodies. No such problem here, where even atop walls of distortion (as in “Step or Stone”), glorious hooks ring forth like you wouldn’t believe. Another example comes in the title track itself, which is an astoundingly beautiful piece of just less than 3 minutes for acoustic guitar, piano and tremolo- and reverb-drenched slide guitar. It sounds straight out of the more tear-jerking side to Ry Cooder’s back catalogue, and the melody played by the slide guitar is one of those incredibly rare ones that will permanently embed itself in your consciousness and consistently drag you back to hear it just one more time. Aural crack, if you will.

Guitarist Steve Molter mentioned in his interview with Mac Nguyen that their drummer Morgan was new at the time of recording It is Curtains, and although it never impeded my enjoyment of the record I do think that this occasionally became noticeable in parts where the drums didn't sound as tight as they could have done. Again, another small but important change with dogs is the way in which the whole band now works together as a particularly cohesive unit. This is as much due to the mixing of the record as it is to the playing and arranging of the band themselves - the harmonies and rhythms work wonderfully on their own, as well as each and every one of them being given the necessary space to shine in what could have turned into a fairly cramped mix (see the latest God Is An Astronaut release for an idea of how hideously over-crowded things can otherwise get!)