Review Summary: A kiss with a fist is better than none.
Sometimes you fall in love with something so fast and so hard that you become willing to forgive and forget even the harshest of transgressions. You get a glimpse of something true, something good, and you practically beg for more, oblivious to the fact that what was once the norm is now the exception. Relationships like this generally tend to self-destruct within a few years, but I still haven’t come to my senses when it comes to Sunderland, England foursome the Futureheads. Their 2004 self-titled debut was such a tasty slab of post-punk, that year’s rage, done so right that it was nearly impossible not to pogo along with. It was all sharp guitar angles, frantic stop-start rhythms, and irrepressibly poppy four-part harmony sung in those thick accents, heavy debts to XTC and Wire notwithstanding. Then came 2006’s disappointing, down tempo
News and Tributes, then the bland, straightforward power-pop of
This Is Not The World, and I was always about ready to call it quits, but there would be that one or two couple songs that harkened back to what this band could be capable of.
Alas, I must love abusive relationships, because
The Chaos, while a definite upgrade from their previous efforts, still finds the band seemingly stuck on autopilot. It does find them happily return to their herky-jerky roots, where a song is more likely to come to a rapid full stop then all of a sudden burst into a punk singalong rather than flow along on vanilla power chords and routine drumming. It’s just that bright ray of hope that will no doubt have me purchasing whatever they release next, the promise of more songs like the brilliant thunder of the title track or the jagged pop glory of lead single “Struck Dumb.” Indeed,
The Chaos contains more than its fair share of tunes that would have stood up well on their debut, and some, like the pile driving ADD rhythm of standout “The Collector” or the spacey, spiraling guitar work on “Jupiter,” that surpass it. Even a fairly by-the-numbers cry for radio play like “Heartbeat Song” succeeds on a sugary melody and singer Barry Hyde’s distinctive staccato yelp.
But whereas
The Futureheads took post-punk in strange and new directions that left you disoriented as often as they exhilarated,
The Chaos seems content to beat the standard formula to death on too many songs. “This is the Life” is all happy-go-lucky guitar bursts and machine-gun drumming with a change-of-pace chorus and gang vocals, but after the similar structures of “I Can Do That” and “Stop the Noise,” it’s more than a little predictable. It’s not that the songs are bad, or that the band is lacking energy (something that seemed definitely possible on their last two records); it’s that, frankly, the melodies and hooks just aren’t there.
The Futureheads’ great secret wasn’t that the band could do a damn good XTC impression; it was that the songwriting was innovative, impressive, and most important of all, engaging. Their well-defined sense of fun is here, without a doubt, and the energy is at a high since their debut, but it just lacks that extra oomph, that bit of melodic weirdness and fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants fearlessness that used to make the Futureheads such a unique face in the post-punk revival. But it’s still a much better record than I would have expected given their past directions, and the sly bastards remembered to throw in just enough tunes to keep me a believer, at least for another couple of years. I’ll always have my “Hounds of Love” cover to go crying back to when they hurt my feelings.
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