If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself, as the old saying goes, and Sunderland’s finest The Futureheads are taking that hoary old cliché literally by releasing their latest effort on their own record label. Produced by the punk rock demi-god that is erstwhile Killing Joke bassist Youth, This Is Not The World is the four-piece’s third effort, and, when all’s said and done, it owes a lot to the highly acclaimed knob-twiddler.
This time around, the music is much tighter than hithertofore (which says a lot considering the ‘Heads’ already economical style). There’s a distinct feeling that the band are keen to turn everything up to '11' and you can practically hear the hunger for success in singer Barry Hyde’s voice, especially on the soon to be indie disco floor-filler ‘Radio Heart,’ which should hopefully see the boys conquer the charts and hearts of music fans across the world. But on the whole, the record falls a little short of the mark.
There’s no real spark of invention that elevates the band from being a bunch of XTC and Wire fans making a racket in their garage to the superstars that they dream of being and simply put, if you’ve heard one Futureheads album, you’ve heard them all. This Is Not The World is by no means a bad record, it’s just sounds exactly like we thought it would.
Key Track: ‘Radio Heart’