Alterkicks - Good Luck (B Unique)
4/5
By: Alex Lee Thomson
The second ever story this Rockfeedbacker wrote was on Alterkicks and when it was done, they sounded nowhere near as remarkable as this. At the time, they sounded more akin to a muted Snow Patrol or a visionless Verve - still good, yet nothing revolutionary.
Now it seems they've developed a sound that rivals The Killers. There's no bigger revelation than hearing a band you'd long since forgotten return to life with one of the best songs you've heard for months and 'Good Luck' by Alterkicks ranks up there with the biggest surprises we've heard this decade. It's perfectly graceful, and gets your toe tapping and head bopping quickly with a hesitant harmony that good-humouredly wails from side to side battering the deep recesses of your mind with a riff that's so sensational it should have been on 'Sam's Town' (it could have done with a few). You feel sorry for Brandon Flowers as when he hears this, he's going to be inconsolable - it's all that 'Sam's Town' could have achieved had it not been for The Killers fiddly production approach. At moments it's like Travis, other times it sounds like the soundtrack to Labyrinth, all shook in Bowie unpredictability, and yet there's something incredibly fresh to it... a positive and frisky crispness that's going to make it so playable, enjoyable and liberated.
There's a freedom spark (hey hey) that progresses and transgresses the tune throughout all the changes it undergoes on its way to such greatness... and it is greatness. The lyrics are moderate, sweet and compulsive becoming memorable without suffering a cyclical curse of bold catchiness that'll wear off after a few spins. 'Good Luck' could be the song of the summer, and the marker for all new bands to be measured against. Although it's got a familiar essence it's far enough away from everything else to declare itself unique.
With an album on its way, Alterkicks are assured to become a lot of peoples' new favourite plaything, and if they deliver a rollercoaster of stomping reverberations that light up a room the way this does, they won't fail. We'd go on and on about this one song for days if we could and once we stop playing it we'll get down to putting more pens to paper, but it's becoming increasingly hard to press stop as the rolling and excitingly uplifting vibes grip us and take us for a dance around the cosmos.
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