Chances are, if you are reading this review, that Britpop and/or Madchester has had some impact in your life; if you are interested in hearing more, then you’ve definitely come to the right place.
After making a decent splash with first album Hill’s End, the Australians DMAs are back with their sophomore effort, and have a big year ahead of them. As well as some prestigious gigs of their own at Glasgow Barrowlands and the Kentish Town Forum in the pipeline, there is also a support slot with one of their heroes, Liam Gallagher, at Finsbury Park in the offing.
Fortunate then that they are fully prepared; the majority of For Now is designed to soundtrack the summer, by hook or by crook.
Blissful neo-psychedelia pervades the album – so much so that it sounds like instant nostalgia, recreating images of the halcyon summers of youth that never were but feel otherwise. The opening track of the same name explodes like a blast of sunlight through grey clouds in an uncannily similar way to the Stone Roses, while In The Air is a dreamy, woozy ballad built around a piercing yet mournful guitar lick.
The Britpop and Madchester comparisons are hard to avoid; on Do I Need You Now? vocalist Tommy O’Dell’s vocals eerily echo Tom Clarke of the The Enemy. Sure, it’s cribbing from post-Britpop, but ten years on it’s probably OK. Likewise Break Me, which steals a chorus or two from Kasabian.
But in truth, the comparisons are mainly built on the group’s fundamental pop sensibilities. Warsaw is pure, teeth rotting pop and Lazy Love is the best song The La’s, orators of arguably the finest ever pop single, never wrote. Indeed, the whole album is built on elation, which is central to pop music’s DNA. Hang on….
Highlight of the album is The End, which creates a moody atmosphere all of its own, opening with a disconsolate and earnest vocal from O’Dell before the dark electronic production takes centre stage in propelling the sound forward, accompanied by an earth, rather than sky, scraping guitar motif that Johnny Marr would happily take credit for.
It’s easy to be cynical when the influences are so obvious, but when it’s apparent – as it surely is in this case – that the songs are written as tributes and in deference of a genre or style of music, rather than attempting to cash in on a movement, then that should be respected and appreciated.
In this day and age ‘I’ve heard it all before’ carries less and less weight as an argument against bands. With the wealth of music available, it’s highly likely to have been heard before. But someone, somewhere, won’t have, and if discovering and appreciating For Now leads them to Some Friendly, The Stone Roses or I Should Coco, it would take a cold heart to deny them that pleasure.
And the rest of us can just sit back and enjoy this splendid album.