FUTUREHEADS
The Futureheads
679 Recordings
· Hip Brit things who take their name from the Flaming Lips album Hit to Death In The Future Head.
Much has been made of the British press and the frequency with which they anoint the next big things – the Futureheads are the latest band you simply cannot live without – but something else happens as 52 New Music Express covers are filled a year. British pop stars shed their musical skins equally quickly, so if XTC are no longer yelping art noiseniks or Paul Weller can no longer muster the chest-beating authority of The Jam, circa In the City, who can blame the Futureheads for claiming this still-fertile musical turf?
All four Futureheads write, sing and, most notably, generate ideas at once. So "Alms" sounds as if it’s built on the springing human loop of a tightly-wound rhythm section, while the following track "Danger of the Water" is nicely disembodied. One imagines their formative gigs, with no gaps between songs and sets no longer than 15 minutes, set the frantic pace for the tracks heard here. It’s the difference between garage rock and "Le Garage" – it’s how football chants sound different when beamed in from outer space. Given that they cover Kate Bush in one breath and cite Dadaist-Surrealist
photographer and painter Man Ray in the next, the Futureheads deliver invention in bite-size chunks.
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