RBA’s debut is a heavy hitting rock n roll record. As many of RAISED BY ANIMALS’ South Yorkshire contemporaries blaze an avant-garde/experimental trail with mucho success, this drags our received and recycled ideas about what rock music is up to speed with not so much as a sideways glance.
‘Stars & Guitars’ for one, has it all. Demented funk and subtle shifts in tempo are regulated by abusive high hat percussion. The choppy rhythm guitar grinds out a hole in the wall of the song. The vocals are self-reflexive and angry enough to have us believe that they care:
“Let us all be winners/Let us all be stars
Sell your favourite records/Buy yourselves guitars”
‘Talking Circles’ is the classic tale of artist misinterpreted as loser, and the urgency grabs you by the ankles once again, shaking the apathy from your tree with a surging four-beat resurrected from some hazy and distant past. All of this falls away to leave an echoing seventies-style refrain, before the pounding of the drums mark out a chaotic reprisal.
Forthcoming single ‘Rabbit Soup’ is acoustic in part, with sumptuous harmonies and a classic feel that is hard to ignore. There is talent in abundance, and plenty of front about this Barnsley quartet as they walk in the shoes of Rock n Roll greats from seasons’ past, pulling it all off with straight faces and their integrity fully intact.
As guitar bands go, there is a benchmark here for all pretenders to the throne to aim for. The Spirit Of Rock is with these lads, no question. The roving beats and disturbing strings of ‘Down Here Looking Up’ melt into a near bossa-nova, the tempo almost grinding to a halt, and suddenly comes the realisation that this is head and shoulders above most of the like-minded competition.
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‘Canned Air’ is another big hitter, dragging the listener in and out of the rebuilt and refreshed progressive sound as he/she clings gratefully to the acoustic hook at its centre.
Four lads, bad haircuts, guitars? It’s such a reworked and repeated formula that this is a joy – you know what’s coming, but still this will knock your socks off, and have you scratching your head in sheer amazement. The record has a live dynamic about it that is really hard to resist, and as a showcase for songwriting, it has a peculiar/familiar strength that will pull you right in.
Is that Sheffield’s Sheaf/Castle Markets we hear name-checked during the epic finale ‘Wellington Street Crash’? This is one to hear, most definitely it is, but this reviewer reckons that you will hear it eventually come what may. Excellent!
http://www.raisedbyanimals.com/
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