Labels: The Company With the Golden Arm
Review by: Ian Scanlon
Topnotch, upbeat, herky jerky, yelp ‘n’ yell disco post hardcore from Sunderland. This band’s been around for a couple of years now, and seems to be getting deeper into what they want to do, their older material (though it came in beautiful handmade envelopes and had nice handsprayed covers) sounded rough and ready. This sounds plush by comparison, it has a lot of the things that the “an emergency” record had, disco breakout beats like the Raptures good songs, yelping vox … but the extra’s here make it much more interesting for me. They appear to have added a permanent keyboard player, (Quine from the Rest, who is also a top chap as I recall), and are found to be raiding the percussion instrument drawer as well. I’m surprised that this lot haven’t been getting more attention in the wake of The Futureheads proper break out into the mainstream (it was Anth’ from WFN who first told me about that band), and the success of This Ain’t Vegas on a more “zine” level. As the band have definitely got some funk in the trunk, and a nice line in single note Q and Not U twiddly guitar lines, “tweak yourself” is probably the standout track for me. It has nice vocal interplay that recalls those two chaps out of Braid at it over the top of a very nice guitar part (although it does sound very similar to a track of the last but one Ted Leo album!). The boys bring in 6 tracks in under 18 minutes which is about how I like these bands to be. I seem to recall that last time I saw them they had a touch of post rock about them, which seems to have been exorcised on this record (which is a good thing in my mind). Everything here is concise and lean, from the guerro to the buzzy keyboard sounds, and the songs benefit from the lack of stodge. Check this out and hopefully these chaps will deliver an album’s worth of gear sooner rather than later.