Pennsylvania band The Districts are due an enormous amount of credit. Why? Well, because when you listen to them, you get a real sense of deja vu, as though their sound has visited you in a past incarnation, yet, when you try to pinpoint who they sound like, exactly, it becomes a more jarring task than you initially thought.
Now I’m going to contradict myself completely, as within seconds of ‘4th And Roebling’ beginning, you’re instantly hit with the energy and zest of The Strokes in their early days, but to tar them with a brush marked “Casablanca Copyists” would be doing them a calamitous disservice. Sure, this and ‘Peaches’ follow a kind of modern indie rock template that breaks little new ground, but there is a raw energy here that few others capture so well. Perhaps the most comparable bedfellows would be Texan garage rockers White Denim, certainly on the more exciting tracks such as ‘Hounds’, a messy slacker anthem with blink-and-you’ll-miss-it Radiohead ‘Just’ type riffery, or the quite thrilling ‘Young Blood’, in which frontman Rob Grote amplifies the angst to Great Grandmaster level, amidst a tempest of wildly caterwauling guitar which, whilst perhaps not in My Bloody Valentine territory, is certainly evocative of My Vitriol.
It’s not all rafters of burning fireballs though, as Grote jumps the barrels and at least attempts to rescue the maiden in more reflective, stripped back acoustic numbers such as ‘6AM’, with its ‘Whiskey In The Jar’ derived melody, and ‘Sing The Song’, which is where I believe the editor himself was coming from when he told me he thought it somewhere between Springsteen and Frightened Rabbit. In truth, you could probably hurl any number of contemporary singer/songwriter types at the wall The Districts have built, and most of them will stick. Paolo Nutini, Jake Bugg, even Beck – all of those could be effectively compared to The Districts’ sound, except that the musicianship here is deliberately sluggish at times and is clearly not intended for Top 40 radio.
‘Suburban Smell’, another bare bones composition, sounds like something Pete Doherty might have written and has its own charm, but ‘Chlorine’ is the one that wins the goldfish on its first hoop, all sweeping strings and ribald reverb before being possessed by swirling Wurlitzers – or at least synths that sound like one – and leaving one heck of a rush in its wake.
Never has an album been so aptly named. Flourishes aplenty, and really, with these songs, they’re spoiling us…
[Rating:4]
