It pays to be cautious of any band originating from Sheffield at the moment. There’s still something of a backwash of bands with similar approaches to their more famous residents. It’s not entirely fair, because it’s not like Alex Turner invented the Sheffield accent, but the Arctic Monkeys did spawn a lot of copy-cats.
Volcanoes do alright, though. ‘Long Live My Enemies’ does enough to fend the more obvious comparisons. It sounds like Lightspeed Champion’s cover of Amy Winehouse’s ‘Back To Black’ performed by a semi-twee indie band. It’s alright – the melody is catchy, with an urgency that makes a song more than listenable. It’s an understated song held together by a strong melody, which grows and develops all the way through. The lyrics are different, without the overt smugness that befalls so many bands in the genre, and it’s there are new words emerging all the time instead of relying on furtive repetitions of the chorus. They’re not so ‘now’ that they will sound out of date by Christmas.
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‘Gunter the Shooter’ sounds like Bloc Party if they were a more conventional indie band. Again, there are several facets to the song that prevent it from becoming too linear, and it’s pleasantly rough around the edges. There’s a lilting Madness feel to rhythm section, and little undertones of chaos between each verse to suggest there’s plenty to pay attention to. The song peaks with some nice shouting at the end that has live favourite written all over it. It’s not all spiky and rigid like so much of the conveyer-belt indie is, and there’s room for a bit of experimenting.
Sweet – a good new indie band. It’s been a while. Check them out.
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