In every sense it doesn’t matter,
because such is the power and pull of ‘Robot’ (and
the Futureheads’ debut album in total) that to pick
apart is to miss the point. The Futureheads seem so potently
to be about something urgent and meaningful (are, I understand,
about such things), that to not fully grasp what these things
might be is irrelevant.
The urgency and frantic pacing themselves
feel like a manifesto against stagnation, complacency and
piss-poor all-pervasive coffee-shop rock. The wild overlapping
of vocals and ideas - and not-infrequent use of two-great-tunes-in-one
- give ‘The Futureheads’ a kind of Year Zero
instruction manual feel that is compelling and even, perhaps,
dangerously exciting/excitingly dangerous.
That said, the final appearance of this
long-awaited album could count, for this band, as something
of softening. Only two songs here last for less than the
once-statutory two minutes. Only one, however, breaks the
three-minute mark, and it still takes 14 songs to get anywhere
approaching an acceptable definition of a long-player.
Production-wise too they have at last managed
to capture the burning ferocity of their live shows, without
sacrificing any of the ubiquitous poppy-ness of the writing.
This is thanks to the twinning of one-time Gang Of Four guitarist
Andy Gill with brand newcomer Paul Epworth in the production
chair. Epworth particularly emerges as one of the freshest
production talents in the UK right now, leaving behind stints
as live sound guy for the Rapture, Liars, LCD Soundsystem
and The Kills, which is where the Futureheads picked him
up for this, his first, production job.
‘The Futureheads’ is, if you’ll
excuse the cliché, the record the Futureheads have
always threatened to make, and for that it has definitely
been worth the extra half a year wait. The record maintains
their dictionary definition of “tight”-ness,
while combining with it all the sing-a-long-a-bility they
manage to cram into every crack and crevice. Indeed, it is
hard to put a feeler gauge between the joins of ‘The
Futureheads’, or to imagine how they could have improved
upon its stunningly engineered structures.
Sometimes the sparseness and economy of
the album make it seem like a work of beautiful geometry;
as angular and pleasingly mathematical as a dodecahedron.
Other times its raucousness verges on the ramshackle. And
that too is a treat. ‘The Futureheads’ is the
sound of the Futureheads finding their feet, cutting loose,
having fun and becoming themselves; free of influence. The
early early-Wire/XTC descriptions - which always felt as
much a jibe as accurate pinpointing - now seem positively
inadequate.
The exuberance found here now has as much
in common with the conviction that drove the first two records
by The Jam, or the chakka-chakka guitars of ’Tommy
Gun’-era Clash. The accents may be different (being
pure Tyne & Wear), but the excitement’s box-fresh
and the same, and one that’s felt strangely absent
from the art fringes of guitar music for way too long (barring
perhaps recent welcome incursions from the more capital “A” Art – and
half a generation older - Franz Ferdinand).
Throughout, however, the Futureheads use
of harmonies and call-and-response vocals, plus the sheer
lyrical overload of having all four members in possession
of a microphone, makes them quite unlike anyone else you’re
likely to have heard before. A thorny thicket of words seems
to hide a compelling secret. Lines, words and syllables are
barked, spat, sung, ooh-ed and ahh-ed in, out and over each
other, in a bewildering but thrilling mesh of voices. It
is exhilarating, to say the least.
To say more, ‘The Futureheads’ is
fresh, aggressive, strange, brazen, urgent, alienating, tuneful,
abstract, scary, hysterical, fun and about to become as vital
as breathing.
Barry Hyde (vocals/guitar)
Ross Millard (vocals/guitar)
Jaff (vocals/bass)
Dave Hyde (vocals/drums)
http://www.thefutureheads.com |
