Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 15/08/05
Label: V2 Records

By now, the idea of four seemingly underfed young men squeezed into skin-tight jeans playing - oh dear - angular art punk is enough to inspire the rolling of eyes and a long sigh of boredom. Why bother when there's a copy of Wire's "Chairs Missing" lying around, right? And yet, as Britain comes to resemble the opening credits of "Monkey Dust", it would appear that a voice in the wilderness addressing these anxiously fraught times comes from…er…four seemingly underfed young men squeezed into skin-tight jeans playing…well, you know the rest.

The Rakes have certainly come in for some flak of late. Be it singer Alan Donohoe's "Tonight-Cat-I'm-going-be-Ian-Curtis" style of performing or that on first encounter the East London quartet could be any one of the hopeless urchins that The Libertines dragged in their sorry wake but lending The Rakes an ear becomes an increasingly rewarding experience.

As a snapshot of metropolitan life in 2005, "Capture/Release" not only hits the spot, it damn near rubs it out. Clocking in at just over 30 minutes, The Rakes' debut is by turns profoundly unsettling and savagely funny as each song is propelled by a seething sense of purpose.

"Retreat" is the story of an empty social life fuelled by a peer pressure that ups the ante to new levels of mindless stupidity while the grimly hilarious "The Guilt" raises a knowing laugh as Donohoe chronicles the consequences of drunken, casual sex: "I just woke up in someone else's bed/She was overweight/What did I do last night?/I found paradise in between her thighs/It was quick and nice/Now I'm feeling cold as ice." It's precisely this emptiness that lends "Open Book" an added poignancy when Donohoe sings, "Turn on the TV/It's 2AM, there's nothing on/I just need something to focus on".

As evidenced on "22 Grand Job", even work proves to be another mundane activity as the rat race conspires to crush any sense of individuality but it's on "Terror!" that The Rakes become creepily prescient as the protagonist dreads the inevitable attack on the capital: "Every plane a missile/Every suitcase a bomb/There's no reason in my head now/Only fear in my bones."

"Capture/Release" isn't an album to be enjoyed exclusively by Londoners. The experiences of "Work, Work,Work (Pub, Club, Sleep)" are universal enough and besides, songwriters Alan Donohoe and guitarist Matthew Swinnerton inform their vignettes with themes and situations that are recognisable to all but a few hermits. More importantly, "Capture/Release" works as a documentation of the here and now and one that should stand the test of time.

    by James Marshall