Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 19/06/06
Label: Deltasonic

The weight of expectation is nothing new in rock'n'roll. Neither, clearly, is it something confined to Manchester, that elixir of immortal music. The Stone Roses were essentially bankrupted between the years of their epoch-defining debut and the rather blanker spunk of "The Second Coming". Meanwhile, Happy Mondays chose to concentrate on crashing all-terrain vehicles, smoking crack and bankrupting their home city's most significant cultural institution - Factory Records - rather than facing the challenge of recording a passable follow-up to "Pills 'n' Thrills And Bellyaches".

Quite where The Longcut fit into this meandering muse is a fair question. Well, their debut album, "A Call And Response" has been awaited for some time by many people. In truth, that expectation was not based on a blistering LP that shook all before it, rather their colossal, totemic 2004 Madchester anthem "Transition", which suggested a new Manc force interested in neither the passing drainpipe and exhaust fume chic of The Strokes or the fresher post-punk stylings of Bloc Party or Franz Ferdinand. The comparisons with their esteemed forefathers are made ever more emphatic by the neo-baggy, throwback sonics that immerse this band's every howling disco rattle.

Judging by the thin layers - but thick atmospheres - of "A Call And Response", it's unclear why the LP been so long coming. Equally, this is not the record to propel The Longcut alongside the Northern souls they clearly aspire to. However, it is an album of considerable clout, point and adventure, merging the city's deep-rooted hedonistic mind-set with a melancholic blue sheen stretching from Ian Curtis to Doves. Generally either on the way up or the way down, the three-piece are resolutely skilled at mining undeniably glowing passages of chrome guitar music. "Holy Funk" is all wistful Mogwai comedown, while "A Tried And Tested Method" chimes elegantly despite singer James Ogilvie demystifying the lethal toxins aura with talk of just "beer and alcohol".

Indeed, it should be noted that Ogilvie is from the same ugly caterwaul school as The Music's James Harvey, an experience that in a live arena can maroon The Longcut like a band fronted by a madman demanding his ghouls be gone, to generally non-plussed effect. However, here, it's to The Longcut's credit that they deliver more blistering, charged episodes with potent intent. Opener "A Last Act Of Desperate Man" unleashes sheets of pounding machine percussion, Bernard Sumner guitar judder, popping arcane synths and that wail. Meanwhile, the colliding early Verve storm of "Gravity In Crisis" and the equally tormented "Spies" are both epic salvos of ballistic noise.

Nothing here, however, matches "The Transition", which remains both The Longcut's greatest triumph and their greatest fear. Only when they surpass it will the band also meet those expectations.

    by Ben Gilbert