Manchester's The Rolling People have been steadily outgrowing the city that made them, and their latest single suggests the step up is well underway. 'A Crack In The Glass' is a quieter, more considered side of the band — built from a live session and left with enough air in it to breathe. It has the unhurried atmosphere of something that wasn't forced, which makes sense given how it came together.
The Verve comparison isn't lazy shorthand. There's something genuinely familiar in the way the track moves — that same sense of a song finding its shape slowly, melody dissolving into texture, guitars functioning more as weather than riff. It doesn't chase Urban Hymns-era grandeur, but it understands the principle behind it: that restraint, held long enough, becomes its own kind of enormity. Where The Verve often pushed that tension until it broke open, The Rolling People pull back just before the peak — and it works.
Producer Richard McNamara brings a sense of scale without overloading the track. The emotional subject matter — the grinding, uneven experience of living with poor mental health — is handled with similar restraint. It doesn't overstate itself, which makes it land harder.
The single arrives ahead of their new EP 'Outlier', and comes as the band announces a partnership with Pretty Green. For a group that headlined the O2 Ritz just three years in, the trajectory is hard to argue with.
'Outlier' is out 6th April. Stream 'A Crack In The Glass' in the player below.
