They might well be fed up with being universally compared with labelmates and fellow scousers The Coral, but The Zutons debut album suggests they share more than just a similar record collection.
Beyond the fascination with Captain Beefheart, 60s psychedelia and sea shanties, there’s a countrified eccentricity blended into the mix and, as with The Coral, songs about local characters, the mundanity of the 9 to 5 and broken hearts. Underpinning the entire record is a delightful pop sensibility that holds this rag-bag of ideas together - skillfully produced by the Lightning Seeds' Ian Broudie – experimentation is harnessed rather than indulged.
Commercially, sounding like The Coral could be troublesome, considering the enormous success of their Merseyside counterparts - will the public find time for these latecomers to the scene? Well let’s hope so, because there are enough gems on "Who Killed…" to propel their career in the same upward trajectory.
Opener "Zuton Fever" takes you by the scruff of the neck and forces you to taste their potent bad medicine blues. Stabs of dirty sax trade blows with pyschedelic guitar lines, multifarious percussion and Dave McCabe’s unique vocal howl. "Pressure Point" is about those times when you get home from work and, basically, just want to kill someone – it’s jaunty bass line eventually giving way to screeching guitars, while McCabe yells "pressure" repeatedly as if he’s exploding. There’s plenty of diversity on display too – the forlorn ballad "Confusion" about a relationship gone awry and the country-tinged simplicity of "Railroad".
The album gets closest to straight-ahead pop on "Remember Me" – which could easily have been written by Britpop chancers Dodgy. But really, there’s so many ideas crammed into 40 minutes that this debut more than stands up all on its own.
