Athlete - 'Vehicles & Animals' (Parlophone)
4/5
By: Matt Tomiak
Some day, you suspect, a lot more guitar music will be made like this.
They might look like your bog-standard indiebloke foursome, but Athlete's sound really couldn't be any further detached from the lumpish, sub-Oasis trad rock currently brandished in pub back-rooms and stadiums alike. Devilishly catchy choruses, fizzy keyboard melodies and Joel Pott's world-weary vocals combine to ensure 'Vehicles and Animals' will be competing for the title of Best UK Debut Album of 2003.
With a trio of singles - 'Westside', 'You Got The Style' and 'Beautiful' - exciting rockfeedback into a dampening sweat last year, the Deptford quartet seemed well placed to cement their position as nu-Britrock's finest. And so it proves over the LP; new single 'El Salvador' sparkles with a hazy, long-summer-days-in-the-park charm. And this doesn't just apply to the times when the band are saluting visits to small Central American countries; their ode to a picturesque Kent town ('Dungeness') achieves much the same effect. Quite shockingly.
Coupled with the dreamy likes of 'Shake Those Windows', 'New Project' and the title-track all elsewhere exuding an anthemic, Coldplay-esque richness, this lot righteously deserves to be stumbling across an audience of similarly keen everyday-men the world over - and, via a tapestry of work such as this, they very well might be by the end of the year.
Artists in this article: Athlete
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