OK, “Blueprints” is the début single from young Brummie band 51 Breaks, who play a sort of bombastic indie rock… no, wait, come back! I understand your reaction - hell knows that all too much of what gets peddled under the indie rock banner is tedious Paul Weller tribute acts or turgid scally-rock - but 51 Breaks have got something going on here that’s well worth a listen.
The good news is that they’re looking beyond the current NME checklist of influences, giving the tracks on “Blueprints” a big rich sound by melding moody wails from the dark side of Brit-pop with the bright guitar tones of power-pop. Indie bands with a keyboard are ten a penny at the moment, but unlike the twee electro-retroists 51 Breaks have made the effort to integrate the instrument into their songwriting instead of using it as some sort of fashionable garnish.
“Blueprints” itself kicks us off, with rocky guitars treading a thin line between clangour and tone, and with the synth venturing far beyond the realm of the preset patches and changing from glassy string stabs to filtered burbles and back again. The gotta-leave-this-town lyrics are nothing to write home about, but 51 Breaks have a great knack for vocal melody that gives the average poetics a strong empathic punch.
“Embers” is not the most original of songs either, full of ambiguous slogans and imprecise angst, but it really fills out the soundscape, guitars and keys working together to produce some naggingly catchy hooks and an undeniably memorable chorus. There’s a kind of Bowie-esque melancholia about 51 Breaks, and it’s on “Embers” that it burns the brightest; play it off against the flamboyant and progressive songwriting, and you’ve got a sound that feels strangely familiar and new at once.
“Dirty Hands” highlights the love-it-or-loathe-it edge of the band, namely Michael Turner’s nasal falsetto voice; at its best it sounds like the chap from Spacehog, but at its worst it reeks of histrionics and overstatement. The layers of “oh-oh, oh” backing vocals are also a risky gambit, taking 51 Breaks dangerously close to the cliff-edge above Cheese Valley, but somehow they manage to keep their footing.
“Dirty Hands” also completely and shamelessly steals its main hook from Don Henley’s “Boys of Summer” - a song that has been cloned, burgled and rewritten so many times since its release that it should be entitled to some sort of award - but it’s the sort of wholesale theft you want to forgive, not only because it is so blatant, but because it actually works rather well in context.
51 Breaks aren’t quite the finished article yet. They could do with reining in the pretentiousness a trifle, but “Blueprints” shows that they’ve got the potential to move on to greater things; it’s the sort of single that will hopefully make some smart producers sit up and pay attention. It feels like it’s been too long since we heard a a homegrown indie rock band who actually sound like they give a crap about anything; perhaps 51 Breaks are the harbingers of better things to come.
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Posted in Music reviews |
Tags: 51 Breaks, alternative, Blueprints, indie, progressive, rock
