Labels: Boss Tuneage
Review by: Andy Malcolm
I’m not sure what’s up with the opening track “Song of Dawn”, what with it’s tribal tterings in the background over the lumbering stadium grunge guitars. It sounds like early Feeder. Being only 90 seconds long, I don’t know if it’s serious or anything, and there is some spoken vocals that sounds like Jarvis Cocker. Very very odd. Trust Annalise to do confound your expectations. Then they kick straight off into the rocking melodic bounce of the super catchy “Forget the Girl”. The chorus will swirl round in your head and you’ll be tapping the foot in time. Great, and ample proof that this band is one of the better that lurks within the UK ‘scene’.
Right, this isn’t a completely new record, there are some re-recorded “greatest hits” sprinkled in amongst the brand new songs. This was issued to coincide Annalise heading out east to Malaysia, Australia and Japan. Which sounds like quite an adventure! Some of the older tunes it features include the ‘lise’s finest moment, the stunning “Signposts & Alleyways”, one of my favourite 7″ singles of last year. Still sounds great. Also got tracks such as the short but sweet “Johnny’s Not Mad” and their lovely acoustic strum of “Empire Builder”. Another new track making it worth your while to pick this up is the amazing “Everybody Wants to Be a Star” with it’s great poppy chugga-chug, I’d liken it to early Dillinger 4 in a way. This song is one of the best things they’ve done yet.
Annalise are a consistently great band, this release won’t let you down if you own previous CD’s, and it’d also work as a good intro for the unfamiliar, with some great songs all assembled in one place. Send your readies to the Tuneage ASAP!