8/10
Cable Boy’s first full-length ‘Forever’ arrives with the kind of ambition that feels less like a statement and more like a purge — a record constantly shifting shape, pulling between noise, melody and mood without ever sitting still long enough to be neatly defined.
The Dublin five-piece lean into contradiction throughout: heavy yet delicate, electronic yet organic, euphoric but often shadowed by something more uneasy. Rather than smoothing those edges out, the album builds around them, letting tension become its own kind of identity.
There are tracks that hit with immediate force, like ‘Something In My Head’ and ‘Forever’, where urgency and distortion take centre stage, driven forward with a restless, almost physical energy. Elsewhere, songs such as ‘Icarus’, ‘Let’s Go’ and ‘Drought’ pull back into something softer and more suspended, built from atmosphere, reverb and slow-burning emotion.
What stands out most is how deliberately unpolished the transitions feel. ‘Forever’ doesn’t aim for cohesion in the traditional sense; instead, it moves like a live set captured in fragments, shaped by instinct as much as structure. That looseness gives the record its tension — it never fully resolves, but that’s kind of the point.
Behind it all, there’s a clear sense of a band still evolving. Formed from school friendships and later expanding into a five-piece, Cable Boy have gradually shifted from early dream-pop roots into something heavier and more fragmented, often described as “goth disco”. On ‘Forever’, that label feels less like a genre and more like a rough outline of intent.
Produced alongside Adam Shanahan and David Tapley, the album carries the energy of a group trying to bottle momentum without losing volatility. It doesn’t always aim for polish or perfection, and in places that unpredictability is what makes it work.
Having already built a reputation for intense, physically charged live shows across festivals like Electric Picnic, Beyond the Pale and Forbidden Fruit, Cable Boy sound like a band more interested in movement than definition. ‘Forever’ reflects that — a debut that feels less like arrival, and more like something still in progress.
