Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 29/05/06
Label: 679 Recordings

Sat on a pop precipice between Gang of Four and Fugazi, The Futureheads' inherent diversity always suggested that they were too smart to box themselves in with their barber shop harmony routine. So, it's no surprise that the Sunderland four-piece have elegantly sidestepped any remaining doubts with their second album. The harmonies remain but rather than reinforcing a stop-start dynamic, this time they cohere to support a more satisfying song craft.

The emphatic tension-release formula that yielded so many thrills on their 2004 debut is the obvious victim of this shift in focus; far less instantaneous rewards surface via the songs on this album with repeated listens. If The Futureheads once dashed through their pop songs, uncertain of their appeal but sure that they could convince with carefully mapped-out harmonies, they now put the same painstaking preparation into The Song Itself. Producer Ben Hillier refrains from the sonic eccentricities that marked his work on Elbow's "Cast of Thousands" and Blur's "Think Tank" and harnesses instead this band's discipline in all the right places, encouraging them to stretch out within their self-defined narrow margins.

Without the riotous asymmetric thrash of misleadingly dumb opener "Yes/No", "Cope" or the intentionally belligerent "Return of the Beserker" sitting astride the album, the results might be greeted as prematurely grown-up. "News And Tributes" is certainly more '80s sophistication a la XTC and Scritti Politti than it is the barking and yelping of northerners in thrall to the artful rock of The Jam and Gang Of Four. "Favours For Favours" even suggests the emotional ache of real melody, something that this album's predecessor was far too self-conscious to risk. "Skip To The End" takes a similar suggestion - in a song addressing fear of emotional commitment - and cloaks it in so much artful control that it's arguably the most complete three minutes of pop they've ever pieced together.

So carefully paced is this record, weighed and measured for the correct balance of what's put in and what's taken away, that it never offers emotional triggers which bypass cerebral process. That's just not what The Futureheads do. They've triumphed here in their own, painstakingly paired down language; a kind of poetry of repression. Consequently, they've proved to be one of the few acts of the current UK wave to deliver a second album worth listening to.

    by James Poletti