Labels: Count Your Lucky Stars – sncl
Review by: MH
I’m not sure why it took me so long to get around to listening to this one properly. Perfect Future have been kicking around for ages and I’ve always liked their stuff. I reviewed their “Irrational, Malleable, Inevitable” 7inch on here last year and this record sees them picking up and stepping up from there. This time you get more of a mix of styles than before as the band’s evolution continues. There are bits of 90s and 00s emo, post hardcore and indie rock as well as talkier vocals mixed in with harsher moments. The guitar sound is really pretty at times and they swing between this and noisier moments throughout, so much so that you could even wave a Yaphet Kotto reference around in their general direction. It’s not unusual for Perfect Future to write politically-minded lyrics either and the title of this record can be taken quite literally. Lyrically, they deal with all sorts of politics and commentary and there is a huge amount of depth to the texts in every song. The restrained opener and the more urgent “A Call To Arms”, which follows it, both reference Ginsberg and you’ll find references to F. Scott Fitzgerald and Blake along the way too. The ferocious honesty of the heavier “Only Life Is Holy (Part II)” really is something else while the following track, “Whole World Wasteland”, is astounding – there is a beauty in the guitar sound contrasting wonderfully with the utter desolation in the lyrics. It culminates with a self-titled final track and the proclamation that “There will be no future without perfection! Babylon must fall tonight!”. This is a really good record. In fact, if I had listened to it when it was released in 2014, and if I had written an end of year list, this would have been hovering around the top of that list.