Reasons to be cheerful…the often-fickle world of indie appears to be facing an about turn; hey, things are even undergoing a facelift round Merseyside way. Liverpool’s newest young things The Zutons are striking out on their own, easily evading notions of scouse copyism with a collision of taut, wild-eyed rock and oddly belligerent soul.
It’s a surprise to find that the famously foppish ex-Lightning Seed Ian Broudie is presiding over the production desk in this instance. In all seriousness, who would have predicted all those years ago that Broudie would ever put his name to such a wonderfully cantankerous and darkly quirksome work?
Who Killed The Zutons? opens with the truly killer riff of ‘Zuton Fever’, a slice of B-movie inspired mania, while the relentlessly contagious ‘You Will You Won’t’ opens with a shambolic guitar fanfare not heard since the likes of Hendrix’s ‘Crosstown Traffic’. With their amphetamine-fuelled swamp blues, The Zutons are on occasion more worthy of comparison with Jon Spencer Blues Explosion than they are with their fellow Liverpuddlians.
In saying that, the album is not without its inconsistencies – ‘Remember Me’ and ‘Moons And Horror Shows’ give journalists enough reason to wheel out those displeasing comparisons to T** C***l. ‘Confusion’ may be an anecdote to the brazen swagger of the album, but in the overall scheme of things, it merely serves to bring the band’s defiant persona down a peg or two.
It may be a somewhat stylistically chequered work, but this debut serves as a neat little mission statement in itself, and provides The Zutons with enough ammo to break free of the shackles of the scene of which they have become the kingsmen.