Welcome To The North comes two years after The Music’s first eponymously-titled, extremely well-received album. Like its forerunner, The Music’s latest is right up there: 11 brilliant rock/pop songs bursting with amazing joie de vivre and youthful exuberance. No wonder The Music - only a couple of years out of the school where they originally formed the band - have been hailed as the next high hopefuls on the post-Britpop landscape, possibly the most important group since Oasis.
But they have an edge over Oasis; less navel-gazing, more worldly wise (or perhaps world-weary), The Music’s heavily American-influenced brand of Northern British rock bespeaks a passionate integrity that’s contagious. From the primal wail in this album’s opening title track to the hidden guitar frenzy at the end, Welcome To The North is extraordinarily exciting, and the production is so good (hats off to Brendan O’Brien, whose credits include Rage Against The Machine, Soundgarden and Pearl Jam) that the four lands from Leeds are almost playing in the room with you.
Early U2 and Jane’s Addiction are influences, and the singing, well! Rob Harvey possesses a rare vocal range, which can plumb the depths and reach skywards effortlessly and consistently.