Amid the generically playful release of a Kate Bush cover and Noel Gallagher marking them the weirdest band he’s ever seen, The Futureheads have set upon us an album of great complexity without alienating the Pop audience, taking time enough to invade every other superstar Indie DJ in the UK’s playlist with current re-release Decent Days and Nights and the aforementioned cover Hounds of Love. Without examination, the band and their brilliant debut could be written off as another anti-cool anti-conformist band of the moment, akin to the likes of Bloc Party and the Kaiser Chiefs. However, when the album is actually given the courtesy of a listen, it is easily seen that it’s no case of style over substance.

Reportedly influenced as much by classical compositions as it was by Queen, The Futureheads is a fast-paced work of art rock. Snow Patrol’s gilded guitar picks (see SP’s How to Be Dead) usher in the sweetly half-harmonic notes of Le Garage, setting the pace for the record with nonsensical (but fun sing-a-long) ‘oh’s ‘ah’s and ‘do’s everywhere. Vocalist/guitarist Barry Hyde’s voice is spot-on pitch-perfect choir geek gone alternative – with a Geordie Mackem accent to boot, while brother Dave beats the skins softly and steadily, marching his elder into battle.

Still swimming, we’re taken through the punk-stomp of Robot; angled art rock aimed (albeit perhaps unintentionally) at breaking the mould and pushing the boundaries a little bit further. A to B is relentless in its harmonies, especially in a delightfully assaulting intro/chorus. Pop hooks galore.

Current single Decent Days and Nights is a little less manic; lulling deep vocals blend with the bass line before being aggressively bullied into the background with a battering call-to-arms belting out the title.

Hyde has described his lyrics as “caustic and sarcastic”, which is well seen in Meantime where he slates uninteresting ‘false conversations’ in an amusingly frank manner: ‘I didn’t find it funny/your story didn’t do it for me…I said you were a moron/when I said it I was smilin’/so you thought that I was jokin’’.
Danger of the Water explores the uselessness of hindsight at its best – the telling of a tragedy after it happened perhaps: ‘the beginning of the disaster/was difficult to spot’, and there’s incentive for blame: ‘The speed of your reaction/went too slow to make a difference’, ‘you said it didn’t matter/but then that was you all over’. Without counting the subtle repeated chords, here the vocal harmonies and their timing are the heart of the remarkably well-structured rhythm, complicated and essential.

All in all, Sunderland’s newest export (second to none and on a par with latest soon to be popstrels and tour support Maximo Park) have delivered after a long labour (the album was re-recorded after the lads deemed the first cut a terrible listen) a joyful bundle of intriguing and ingenious melody, thus proving they’re more than a poor man’s Franz where geek, I mean, art rock is concerned. Just jokin’ ’heads…