Young Knives? Wrong kind of cutlery, boys. Try "double-edged sword." "Fit 4 U" and "Terra Firma" are the first and among the finest songs on this platter, built on spiky, lightly distorted guitar, ticking hi-hats, and singer Henry Dartnall's urgent, heavily-accented bark. Problem is, there's a, how you say, Superabundance of bands that can be described the exact same way and to catch up with all of the ones you've tabled for a later date would require locking in yourself in some bunker (preferably an "angular" one) until 2010. So how exactly are these guys supposed to battle general scene fatigue as well as second-record expectations when they risk, at best, being a retread and, at worst, being ignored?
As their sophomore bow suggests, offer, how you say, a Superabundance of mainland styles, making you all that harder to pin down-- a bit of Blur here (okay, a big chomp of "Magic America"), some Futureheads there, and top it off with some Arctic Monkeys just to be safe. Comparable bands have toyed with similar tweaks, but what the Young Knives have going for them is a lower profile-- even if it's about the equal of the follow-ups from the Gang of Four gang of four (Bloc Party, Franz Ferdinand, Futureheads, Maximo Park), it's more likely to be seen as a part of a journey as opposed to an endpoint after a fantastic debut.
But as Superabundance grows more diffuse-- by the end, they're crafters of minute-long chamber pop and moony psychedelia-- it still revolves around the eternal maxim of British rock: "Modern life is rubbish." It's a decidedly bummer affair, and even though the aggressive tempos suggest they're willing to fight against the crushing weight of existence, there's no relief to be found anywhere in Dartnall's lyrics-- not in material goods, not in your fellow man, and certainly not in romance. As much as Gang of Four's musical influence exerts itself on Superabundance, you could argue that it's the lyrics of "Anthrax" that really sold them for Young Knives. If so, it may have informed Dartnall's unfortunate tendency towards overgeneralization: "Up All Night" is your garden variety bitterness aimed at the stockyard nightmare of club life, but as Dartnall asks, "What's the point?" it sounds sophomorically rhetorical; I mean, people are still having sex and no one can seem to stop them, right? Meanwhile, "Counters" feigns suicidal, but it's really more bipolar-- between the dazed harmonies and unhinged caterwauling, it's a heretofore unimaginable hybrid of the Cansecos and Cold War Kids.
Judging from "Turn Tail", it's empathy that could probably do Young Knives better in the future than consumptive genre-poaching. The emotional and physical centerpiece of Superabundance, it's hardly a ballad, but it retains more heft than most of the miserablist material that surrounds it. "We are slaves on this ship/ This ship's sinking" might not be the most sensitive or original commentary, at least until the next line makes it sound exponentially sadder: "We will not reach the shore." It's paradoxically the most anthemic moment on Superabundance as well, the light-bulb moment where Young Knives realize their strengths but, most importantly, start to realize the limitations in them.
