Temples

Photo credit: Fat Possum.

Milling around a festival a few years ago, I found myself in that midday slog where you’ve been camping for two days and have spent the last 48 hours living off Texas BBQ Pringles (turned out to be a nice intro into student living). The acts I really wanted to see weren’t playing for another hour or two, so, to escape the midday heat more than anything else, I wandered into the BBC 6 Music tent just before their next act came on. One of the festival’s presenters was enthusiastically gallivanting around the stage in a kind of pre-gig warm-up, promising that this next act was about to become ‘your new favourite band’.

This promised musical epiphany turned out to be Temples, a quartet from Kettering, Northamptonshire, playing a round of summer festival gigs to promote their debut album Sun Structures. I hadn’t heard of them before, but they spent the next 45 minutes proving they deserved attention. Fans of Tame Impala, Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Foxygen or King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard will be long-familiar with Temples’ particular brand of psychedelic rock, but they should strike up an interest in anyone partial to a bit of Beatles-mania, too. Each song in Temples’ back-catalogue boasts synths galore, and Temples frontman, James Bagshaw, gives off vocals that are wonderfully lysergic - which only adds to the all-around trippiness. Oh, and they are absolutely cracking live.

Skipping forward to 2017, Temples are fresh from releasing their sophomore album Volcano earlier this year. They’re touring all over the place (UK, Europe, US), but as you would have it, they will be stopping off in Bristol’s Trinity Centre – only a stone’s throw from our beloved Exe. If you’re looking for some well-needed respite from essay deadlines/dissertation woes, this should be exactly what you’re after.