We’re a bit short of new demos this time due, no doubt, to seasonal postal delays, so we thought we’d pick one from the stock pile to comment upon. Thus Embrace. I acquired this demo in April 1996 during Leeds Sound City. I rang the band up and asked for it because I liked their name (a record mogul’s gotta act on instinct). But when I listened to it and saw them live I was disappointed to discover they only had one good song. That’s the first song on this demo, ‘Higher Sights’. Slower and more balladic than their usual stuff, for me it is a song full of ambitious humility in sharp contrast to the two arrogant rowdy rock numbers that follow (‘One Big Family’ and ‘The Last Gas’). The more I listen to it the more I feel ‘Higher Sights’ should have been the first and last song they ever wrote; delicately-crafted, timidly hoping for higher things but acknowledging they might never be, instead of going on and trying to be the new Oasis. I thought they’d set their sights higher than that.