Remember when bands were bands and tunes were tunes? They heyday off indie from the early 80s and just inching into the early 90s, which spawned those quintessential acts like The Smiths, The Wedding Present, Cocteau Twins, The Jesus and Maryc Chain, Happy Mondays, The Charlatans… They simply don’t make indie like they used to. There’s much dewy-eyed nostalgia for this era, and it’s understandable. Times have changed, and what’s more, the way we access music is different now, meaning that mainstream radio like R1 doesn’t cover anything that’s not slick and mass-produced; there’s no John Peel, hell not even Zane Lowe, no TOTP or Chart Show, and no music press to speak of. Word-of-mouth is all well and good, but social media is such an echo chamber, it’s difficult to break in. And so it’s easy to miss emerging acts like The Volunteered, whose debut album is the very essence of the golden age of British indie, distilled and blended to perfection.
Kicking off with single cut ‘Going to Amsterdam’, that sounds like The Jesus and Mary Chain covering The Smiths, and packs the fizz and buzz of huge guitars with a winsome Morrissey vocal. ‘Win is Easy’ is breezy, a proper lightly jangling tune. It’s all about the tunes: succinct pop tunes, only a couple of which clock in at over the three-minute mark, define ‘We Fall Apart’.
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When they slow things down and get reflective, as on ‘The Lights’, they do so with a real tug on the heartstrings. ‘Tell Them What They Want’ is sparse, slow, and sad-sounding, and the stripped-back ‘Fall Back’ is kinda jaunty and very much places the vocal harmonies to the fore.
It’s an album rich in reflection, regret, vulnerability. More than this, though, the production as well is of the vintage era, and best of all, none of it sounds forced or artificial.
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