The Great Leslie return with Chasing Shadows, the fifth single from forthcoming debut album TRACES. Brooding, infectious and increasingly ambitious: The Great Leslie sound like a band closing in on something huge.
Dark, restless and built around a colossal groove, the fifth single from forthcoming debut album TRACES captures a band whose ambitions are becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. There is swagger here, certainly, but beneath it sits something altogether more anxious: a song consumed by pressure, obsession and the exhausting pursuit of something that always seems to remain tantalisingly out of reach.
The track begins beneath a cloud of unease. A sparse, shadowy guitar line circles in the distance before the song suddenly erupts, driven forward by a muscular riff, pounding drums and a bassline designed to pull listeners straight towards the dancefloor.
It is an immediate demonstration of the balance The Great Leslie are beginning to master. “Chasing Shadows” carries enough weight to hit with genuine force, but its tightly controlled rhythm prevents that heaviness from slowing the track down. Instead, the guitars lock themselves into a dark, danceable groove, giving the song the restless energy of someone constantly reaching for something that remains just beyond their grasp.
That tension runs directly through the lyrics. Images of mirrors, fire, lost hours and unattainable peaks create a portrait of obsession and dissatisfaction, with the narrator recognising the destructive nature of the pursuit but finding himself unable to walk away. The line “It’s not the scream of fear that gets you, it’s the whisper” captures the song’s psychological pull particularly well, suggesting that it is not always the loudest doubts that cause the most damage.
Frontman Ollie Trevers delivers those words with a mixture of swagger and desperation. His vocal initially rides confidently across the riff, but there is an increasingly frantic edge beneath the surface. By the time the chorus arrives, the repeated cry of “I’m chasing shadows in the fire” feels both anthemic and conflicted — a hook built to be shouted back from festival crowds, even as it describes a cycle of frustration and self-deception.
The arrangement continues to tighten that grip as the song progresses. Backing vocals move around the central melody, while sharp guitar details and an insistent rhythm section keep everything pushing forward. The production is polished enough to give the chorus genuine scale without sanding away the grit that makes the band compelling.
Its most effective moment arrives when the initial momentum is stripped back. The repeated refrain of “The pressure’s building and building” descends into something darker and more claustrophobic, with Trevers’ lower, near-spoken delivery allowing the anxiety at the centre of the track to take control. Rather than functioning as a straightforward breather, the breakdown becomes another source of tension, steadily gathering weight before the full band crashes back into the final chorus.
It makes the closing section feel enormous. Lead and backing vocals begin to overlap, the riff returns with renewed force and the sense of pressure that has been accumulating throughout the track finally breaks open. Even then, there is no clean resolution. The pursuit continues, leaving the song caught inside the very cycle its lyrics describe.
That ambition reflects the wider trajectory of The Great Leslie. Having accumulated more than 1.6 million Spotify streams and eight million YouTube views, the band have also raised over £25,000 through crowdfunding to support the release of TRACES. During 2026, they have appeared at the Isle of Wight Festival and supported Franz Ferdinand, while their televised run to the final of Germany’s Eurovision selection show, Chefsache, in 2025 helped introduce them to millions of viewers across Europe.
“Chasing Shadows” suggests that growing profile is now being matched by a band increasingly confident in exactly what they want to sound like. It is brooding without sacrificing immediacy, danceable without losing its bite and anthemic without taking the obvious route.
With TRACES now looming on the horizon, The Great Leslie aren’t simply chasing shadows anymore — they’re casting one of their own across the indie-rock landscape. And on this evidence, it’s getting bigger with every release.
Chasing Shadows Is out now.
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