Radio 4 - 'Stealing Of A Nation' (City Slang)
3/5
By: Kevin Molloy
At first it was novel, a crazy new brew of dance and indie, and Radio 4 were there pretty damn near the start. Now, though, it's part of every respectable music-lover's diet; LCD Soundsystem, The Rapture and the like are ploughing forwards, and it's going to take a lot of momentum to break past the rather accomplished 'Gotham!': an energy Radio 4 seem to lack on this LP.
Proceedings start swimmingly with the raging 'Party Crashers'; its thumping bassline, pattering bongos and melancholy echoing piano lifted by the crashing rhythms and driven staccato guitars. The same formula translates into 'Transmission', the vocals disinterestedly slurred with a monotone punk zeal. But it's as the funk slowly ekes from the sound as the LP progresses that your interest does the same. Whilst Radio 4 have spent longer in the studio perfecting this record, it's as if that time has been spent sponging any excess melody from the songs; the effect is vitalising in small doses of one or two tracks - but after three or four, it's wearisome. The detached vocal does little to help matters... the songs blurring into one another without many apparent hooks to keep matters varied and identifiable. After nearly an hour of the above your head's certainly a lot lighter, vacant in fact of all thought; the effect is deadening.
Still, the sacrilege shuffle-play can remove such problems, and the seeming monotony is only a remarkable consistency in style, not a judgement upon the quality control. Nearly every track on this album could spark up the dancefloor, invigorating the movers and shakers, and giving good food for thought to the solvent onlookers. The clear superlative in such a vein is the fantastic '(Give Me All Your) Money', a pulsing beat of a song, with synths and keys galore, and a good proportion of inane 'oooh-oooh'-ing. Still, playing much more than three of these songs in a night would start to have a seriously detrimental effect on the 'floor - there's something innately miserable behind the vibrant rhythms, funky six-strings and nice-guy front of the boys that builds up the more you listen.
Part of the reason is the overwhelming political slant to their lyricism (rather than quote whole lyrics, take the album title - 'Stealing Of A Nation' - and sample song-title 'The Death Of American Radio' as indicators of the content). The depression of such sentiments as, 'I trip you up to watch you fall,' is always countered with the fact that this album was made to be danced to, as they sing enraptured, 'everything is alive, the sound system, the latest rhythm...'
If they want to prove themselves as more than just 'party crashers' Radio 4 will need to pull something a bit more innovative out of the bag fairly soon, or at least something a little more substantial. But for now we're more than happy to mix our politics, indie and dance-music so smoothly into this potent whole - just so long as they realise that their NYC credentials and punk-funk cool are starting to wear thin, and that after being lifted by a scene to such heights, more than this is necessary to shore the foundations.
Artists in this article: Radio 4
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