The Futureheads Focus On The Now

The Futureheads were dropped by their label when their last album, News And Tributes, didn’t match the cash flow of their eponymous first release, and most people assumed they’d go their separate, defeated ways. But most people were wrong- The Futureheads stuck it out and decided to do things their own way. They formed their own label and put out a new record by themselves, free of label demands, free of the tired grouchiness that weighed down News And Tributes. It’s already being billed as the sophomore album that should’ve been, but really, how good is it?

The answer is pretty damn good. The pace of This Is Not The World is relentless, a post-punk-infused bastard child of 70’s mod rockers The Jam and legendary punkers The Clash, and there’s no sign of the bitterness or contempt they’d be justified in feeling after the 679 Recordings fiasco. The album’s much better for it the absence, too. It sounds free. Intoxicating it’s not, but you can get a decent buzz from the relentlessly electrifying, rhythmically nervous, near-mechanical precision of their sound this time around. They’re swimming in the cream of the current wave of post-punk British bands, riding a slipstream of anxious eighth-notes and gasping plunges of trap-door silence to a polished, confident level. It’s obvious straight away in lead single/album opener Beginning Of The Twist that the Futureheads have locked on and honed their sound with an injected sense of urgency. “It’s time to wake up, it’s time to change,” barks frontman Barry Hyde right out of the gate, and this time around the band seems to be taking their own advice. The song kicks ass.

Radio Heart is an endearing glance backward while still managing to sound fresh and new, while the intro to Sale Of The Century is explosive and irresistable, sounding like the Manics. Broke Up The Time is a pure, high-octane tweaky ska binge with Devo-esque vocal patterns, providing the second piece of a machine-gun triad that segues into the end of the album (Work is Never Done and Everything’s Changing Today make up the other two). See What You Want To See is perhaps the most ambitious track on the album, but it’s good that they put it at the very end, cause the party vibe doesn’t work if you don’t commit yourself to it completely. If the Futureheads only played songs like this one, they’d be opening for the Pet Shop Boys reunion tour in no time.

There’s a guitars / bass / drums / vox straightforwardness to This Is Not The World that honors their New Wave leanings without becoming the time-capsule gimmick that so many of their contemporaries have revealed themselves to be. They’re not Franz Ferdinand or Bloc Party, and in case you didn’t know, that’s a good thing. The album does an excellent job of blending the strengths of the first two records for a steady evolutionary progression of the Futureheads’ sound, but there’s an added edge of immediacy to this new batch of tracks- not unlike the Clash on speed. Having honed their focus, the simmering experimentation of the first two albums is traded in for instant gratification with measurable density. The Futureheads are focused on the now, and that’s exactly what this kind of band should do.

This Is Not The World
Nul Records
June 2008

1. The Beginning Of The Twist
2. Walking Backwards
3. Think Tonight
4. Radio Heart
5. This Is Not The World
6. Sale Of The Century
7. Hard to Bear
8. Work Is Never Done
9. Broke Up The Time
10. Everything’s Changing Today
11. Sleet
12. See What You Want