English Country is the debut record from CUSP. It is an album with roots firmly in classic indie seeking lift off with an expansive sound and huge choruses.
CUSP
CUSP are a Milton Keynes trio centred around singer-songwriter Dan Stock. After debuting in 2021 and releasing three EPs alongside several standalone singles, the band now arrive at their first full-length release: English Country. Their influences are clear, but not hidden. CUSP have spoken openly about the importance of The Verve’s Urban Hymns when writing and piecing the album together, particularly its combination of timeless songwriting and expansive, cinematic sound. That provides a useful starting point for English Country: this is familiar British guitar music, but with an ambition to make everyday stories feel larger and more emotionally resonant.
Stock has said that the band wanted to make a timeless record: songs rooted in normal life, but reaching for something bigger. That ambition is apparent throughout the album, even when the music remains deliberately straightforward. There are clean guitars, simple chord progressions and choruses built for festival crowds; there is also a real desire to write about ordinary lives with warmth and detail.
ANTHEMS & ATMOSPHERE
The title track and Forever, Forever are the clearest expressions of CUSP’s immediate, guitar-led side. English Country opens with clean, crisp guitar reminiscent of the Courteeners and Catfish & the Bottlemen. This is very much British indie music, but played with enough energy to stop it feeling like a tired retread. It’s direct, melodic and confident.
Forever, Forever carries on in much the same way: simple chord progressions, a catchy melody and a chorus that festival-goers will be singing back at the band before long. It’s not complicated songwriting, but that’s part of the point. CUSP understand that a great indie anthem does not need to be musically clever to be effective; sometimes, you just need a chorus that people want to shout. There is a risk in working within such a familiar musical language. At times, the band lean so comfortably into British indie convention that the songs begin to blur together. But the album’s strongest moments arrive when that accessible surface is matched by a more ambitious arrangement or a sharper piece of writing.
Me and Lily in the Falling Rain is the best example. It introduces a more ballad-like mood, with a narrated tale enriched by lyrics and songwriting that demonstrate a skill beyond the band’s years. The strings add another layer, almost perfectly replicating the scene described in the track. There is something cinematic here, though the story itself remains small and personal: that contrast works really well. Dan Stock describes the song as the band’s most ambitious work. He explains that they take inspiration from Urban Hymns: timeless songwriting with an expansive, cinematic sound. He also says that the song is simply about how someone can give meaning to an ordinary life.
STORIES, STRUCTURE & STYLE
Love Is a Dying Art is another of the album’s highlights. It harks back to Dire Straits and Bruce Springsteen in both its songwriting and style; a whimsical but well-crafted narrative tale, with some clean, endearing sections within it. The song feels never becomes overly sentimental, and its story gives the album a welcome change of pace.
Human Nature, one of the lead singles, takes a different route. It is a simple but enjoyable acoustic track featuring the superb vocals of Tom A. Smith, another rising star of British indie. His voice fits the song perfectly and the collaboration feels natural. In some ways, it feels a bit same but different within the album. It works more as a single than it does as an album track. The structure and style make it something of an outlier; strangely, that is also why it works.
SHADOW BOXING
The less successful songs are not badly written; they simply do not separate themselves enough from the rest of the record. Temporary Sky just passes by, sounding too similar to several of the tracks around it and never really getting going. Help Yourself has similarly poignant lyrics and is a classic British indie ballad, but it does little to develop CUSP’s signature sound. Both tracks are ok, although neither leave the mark of other songs here.
The album picks up again with Caledonia. The drumbeats, breathy vocal delivery and guitar parts recall a classic Deacon Blue track; beneath that familiar musical character is a rich story about young lives looking retrospectively at relationships through a youthful lens. It’s endearing, well-written and exactly the sort of lift the album needs as it builds towards its conclusion. Shadow Boxing contains more smart lyric writing, delivered in a way that, by the end of the album, feels reassuringly familiar. Once again, CUSP narrate the complications of relationships through carefully chosen metaphors. They may not be breaking new ground, but they are increasingly good at making their own corner of British indie feel believable.
STORIES ABOUT PEOPLE
English Country is not an album that tries to reinvent guitar music. Its pleasures are more traditional: strong melodies, crisp guitars, direct choruses and stories about people trying to understand themselves and each other. At its weaker moments, CUSP lean too heavily on that formula; at its best, they use it to create something warm, vivid and genuinely affecting. For a debut, this is an impressively assured record. The influence of Urban Hymns is clear in CUSP’s desire to mix intimate stories with a bigger sound; importantly, they are not simply trying to recreate The Verve’s record, they are using that ambition as a starting point for something of their own.
English Country occasionally plays it safe, but CUSP are not short on promise. They have made a debut full of melody, thought and songs built to connect; more importantly, they sound like a band who have taken inspiration for the right reasons. They are not trying to recreate: they are trying to make their own timeless record.
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