Down Beside Your Beauty

Some of you will doubtless remember Rollerskate Skinny, who released a bone-fide Irish classic in Horsedrawn Wishes all of ten years ago. The band’s vocalist/guitarist Ken Griffin relocated to the US and now fronts this Brooklyn-based quartet who formed in 2004, when he teamed up with Philadelphia psych-poppers, Aspera. With major label backing they’re being tipped for big things across the water (though for some reason they are currently touring the US with James Blunt!).
It’s not difficult to see why hopes are high for them, given the success of the likes of Interpol and Yeah Yeah Yeah’s etc; Favourite Sons purvey a similarly strong 1980’s post-punk sensibility with sharp, angular guitars and driving, droning rhythms. ‘Hang On Girl’ – a kind of a Bowie’s ‘Heroes’-meets-Echo and The Bunnymen’s ‘The Cutter’ – perfectly sums up their appeal, with Griffin’s distinctive Ian Curtis-like voice holding it together nicely.
In a similar vein, ‘When You’re Away From Me’ and ‘No One Ever Dies Young’ are equally strong contenders, the latter recalling Placebo at times. But it’s not all angsty buzz-saw guitars; the gently rolling acoustically grounded, ‘Tear The Room Apart’, complete with bottleneck-guitar, showcases a different side to the band. The pounding martial beat of ‘Pistols & Girls’ – a kind of doom-laden death march of a ballad in a Mark Lanegan mode – is intriguing, while the mournful ‘To Each Other’, the album’s closer, is another slow burner reminiscent of Starsailor.
While some of the riffs are a tad too familiar to make this the spectacular triumph it might have been, It’s a fine debut all the same, with enough strong songs to make it well worthwhile.