Memory is an unreliable, imperfect tool for manifesting reality, so it was very encouraging to discover that this album still contains, for my money, the finest album-opener / album-closer combo of all of aughts-rock.
"The View From The Afternoon" charges like an asshole, establishing both the horny working class blokeness of the record and Matt Helders as the heir to Travis Barker's throne of Extra Drumming. Here is the chaos of young macho life, chasing birds and having a pint, geezers needing excitement, and so on. And on the back half, we have something approximating bleary-eyed clarity about the whole exercise of being a young offender with "A Certain Romance," which also finds its way into sprinting like an asshole after ear-worming a dual-guitar line that I have been humming for about fifteen years now.
That there are lulls and crests beneath these two high water marks of young dangerous boyhood doesn't make the storm any less perfect. Dancefloors, San Francisco, flip phones, cops, et al. That this band—this band!—continues to stick around and mean something to the unwashed UK / anglophile masses is a minor miracle and proof that youth is not forever. You know what it's better than both burning out and fading away? Keeping it up.
No comments:
Post a Comment