The Good …
The Sunshine Underground are a UK rock band based in Leeds, and their name has been linked with the Arctic Monkeys ever since both Yorkshire bands released their debut albums in 2006. The Arctic Monkeys now have three albums under their belt, but The Sunshine Underground have waited until this time to release their second album, Nobody’s Coming To Save You. There may not have been any masterplan behind this, but hopefully the wait will help people to see that TSU aren’t part of any scene or trend but simply a British band who make great rock music.
The album opens with two tracks destined to become showstoppers. Coming to Save You has blistering drums and intense wailing vocals. Spell it Out has the big sweeping repeating singalong chorus. You can tell from these tracks that the band have a real sense of melody as well as making some powerful riffs and while the rest of the album doesn’t quite hit the same heights, it doesn’t fail to deliver. Other highlights include the stompy single We’ve Always Been Your Friends and the slower paced finale The Messiah.
While the band are hoping for bigger things for themselves, they’ve not forgotten where they came from. Last year the group launched a nationwide search to find fourteen of the best unsigned bands to support each date of their 2010 tour. 250 band applied, and were judged and rated by the four members themselves. “Completely different bands came forward,” says Wellington. “New bands seem to experiment a lot more than we did when we were starting out, with synths and stuff like that. We were really overwhelmed at the response but it is a great opportunity, playing Academy venues. ”
Buy Nobody’s Coming To Save You on Amazon
The Bad …
45 year old Kevin McKeehan is on a mission from God. The singer, better known as TobyMac, wants to bring his brand of Christian music to millions of unsuspecting Americans. For though a massive hit on the Christian radio stations, he’s not yet succeeded in really breaking into mainstream radio.
His latest album Tonight has been hailed for its musical diversity. Diversity in an album is usually welcome, but this is an exception. TobyMac has delved into a few different genres and come up with some of the most irritating music that each has to offer. So we have helpings of autotune pop, the kind of rap music you could play to your mother, the dismal white reggae-pop of Break Open The Sky and the puke-inducing LoudNClear which features his 11 year old son Truett (Tru-Dog). Funky Jesus Music at least has a passable club beat to it, but the lyrics are a sad reminder that this is a middle aged Christian guy desperate to pass himself off as in touch with the urban teenager - “Yo stick it in red / we got the cred”.
It’s not McKeehan’s beliefs that are the problem. The problems are his patronising attempt to copy urban youth culture, and that his songs though they may have some good production and good hooks are banal lightweight copies of commercially successful acts.
And the Outlandish …
In this eerie nightmarish video Liars frontman Angus Andrew is marooned on a raft at sea and being attacked by rocks. As the gentle echoing vocals are abruptly replaced by loud thrashing music, Andrew goes wild and the action becomes frenzied. The ending is a little bit predictable but no less fun for that.
The song is from the new Liars album Sisterworld, which is out on March 9th. The deluxe version includes a second CD with remixes and reinterpretations of each track by various artists including Thom Yorke, Devendra Banhart, Suicide’s Alan Vega and TV On The Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe. Andrew says “It turned out to be a really exciting project. Well shit, I don’t know how much I’m supposed to tell, but I can definitely say that one song I duet with Alan Vega, that’s the second track, and Chris and Cosey from Throbbing Gristle are doing something. I feel like we’ve got the point where we could ask anyone to be involved, and the amazing thing was that no-one I asked to get involved said no.”
