The south London ‘Dream Rock’ quartet ratchet the nostalgia and volume levels high for an absorbing, shape-shifting sophomore single.

For their second release, Rat’s Tails have spared no expense. In comparison to the pithy bedroom-intimacies of 2022 debut ‘Spines’, ‘Coke in the 70s’ constitutes a sprawling epic, with each motif fleshed out to its extreme and enlarged to its spatial limits

It is a crystalline landslide crush of rip-roaring shoegaze maximalism: avalanches of guitars and sky-soaring vocals hold the powers of the elements in their grasp. The lyrics detail, as vocalist/guitarist Courtney McMahon explains, “ a vignette of a very unlucky period in my life,” the elliptical suggestions of dissatisfying love and afterparty pretension. Yet under the pressure of such masses of shimmering noise, those lyrical fragments coalesce into some grandiloquent high-stakes gothic romance.

And what is more, the squiggles of psychedelic zip and sauntering cool-downs of Latin lounge dipped into the mix make ‘Coke in the 70s’ more than just a statement of overdriving shoegaze euphoria. It is as much a winding, mutating narrative of delightful quirks and subtle surprises.

Featuring cult hero Pink Eye Club as it’s guest compere, the accompanying music video is itself a ornately-wrought showpiece of 70s nostalgia – a self-directed “Top of The Pops meets David Lynch”, as intricate and multi-faceted as the very music it visualises.