We’re Alive and We’re Not Alone

Popular Workshop

This is Fake DIY

2008-10-06

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Tour mates with the likes of Blood Red Shoes and Los Campesinos, Popular Workshop are making their way up into the respectable-indie fringe, delivering dirtied up melodic songs with art-rock/post-punk noise influence all set to sharp rhythmic spikes.

We’re Alive and We’re Not Alone is a first LP from a band to watch.

Taking the chugging, meaty sounds from the Shellac/Minuteman bass and drum corner and adding a scratchy trebly guitar sound (the fact that the record was recorded at Electrical Audio with Steve Albini comes as no real surprise), with vocals alternatingly sung and yelped the band tear through thirteen tracks on We’re Alive and We’re Not Alone including recent single “Reptilians” which sits smack bang in the middle between British outsiders like Montana Pete and Cove and Britpop favourites like Graham Coxon and Elastica. This ability the band have is by no means exclusive but the fact that they are already creating buzz and playing NME nights suggests that the may succeed in delivering edgy, angular music to the mainstream where hyped groups like Bloc Party have limped out and failed.

To mix it up a little the band switch to swirling, detuned guitars on the driving My Bloody Valentine ballad “Villains Who Twirl Their Moustaches Are Easy To Spot” at the close of the record, though admittedly (and in a similar fashion to the previously mentioned Blood Red Shoes) their debut album could benefit from a little more diversity from the spiky indie punk over the span of the 13 tracks (or it could perhaps have been left at a punchier half hour length) but this is more of a quibble than a big issue. We’re Alive and We’re Not Alone is a first LP from a band to watch.