The Creem - A Taste of Cherry The Creem

A Taste of Cherry is the dialed-in debut from Mike Stroud of Ratatat and Nick Thorburn of Islands.

Born from a deep reverence for songcraft and the alchemy of collaboration, The Creem arrives on the scene fully realised, with the two friends channelling years of experience into something immediate and undeniable.

Cherry is an embarrassment of sweet riches, packed with sticky, instant classics that channel the spirit of bands like The Kinks and Electric Light Orchestra. Replete with tender hooks that burrow in your brain like a beetle, wry words that carry your heart to another green world, and mastodonic melodies that rip your face off like a riled-up T. Rex.

Stroud’s shimmering guitar lines, sharp-edged, heart-rending and irresistibly mesmeric, lift the songs skyward, but Thorburn’s earthbound vocals, funny, aching and quietly devastating, bring them back home.

The production from Stroud is both glossy and off-the-cuff, with heavenly guitar tones, tasteful cellos, playful vocoders, whipped-cream percussion and harmonies that reach for the sublime, like “teenage symphonies to God”.

At once familiar and strangely new, the resulting sound from The Creem is timeless and evocative without resorting to cheap nostalgia. In short, A Taste of Cherry is a propulsive debut that grips you tight and never lets go.