This month, from Manchester’s soil springs Brit Rock band The Words’ debut album, Truth and Faith.
The album is a surprising one, and by that I mean surprising in a good way, it’s a good solid fashioned rock music release. Honest lyrics, homely imagery and understated but mature guitar work.
On the cd you will find none of the kind of disjointed danciness or quirky rhythmic noises you might expect from a 2011 release. The album isn’t trying to be anything, its not trying to trick you, it’s the kind of album that accompanies a pint in the local over the pool table, or in the background of an inner city back garden barbeque gathering on an orangey yellow summer afternoon. It may seem funny to say but its not even trying to be ‘cool.’ Wait, hold on, it’d be better to say fashionably unfashionable. Or even unknowingly good. What I mean is when you listen to it, you don’t picture a bunch of silver spoon Topman fops pretending to be deep and brooding with fringes a falling and blazers a size too small. There’ll be no lingering stares into the camera lens in the video, none of that. But you may say that maybe a band needs at least a little of this, a little forced mystery, a little feigned emotion maybe to capture the hearts of the music downloading public. At least at first… But listening to this album with its solid simple construction, northern accents and easy feel you are more reminded of traditional music. It is as though this music is becoming ingrained into the nation’s psyche as being the new folk. Folk re-imagined for these decades of supermarket and coffee chains, of foreign footballers and recession. More akin to the likes of that great British band The Levellers. Once the instance happens where you imagine it in this context, you cannot shake the sentiment, the album comes alive to you and you only see it for what it is.Unpretentious, simple and good. Its as though as British people we should factor music like this into our lives on the medical pretence that it’s good for you.
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