If 1996's Trainspotting soundtrack was the Britpop generation's Saturday Night Fever, London quartet Scanners seem to be holding out hope for a Staying Alive sequel. Everything about "Joy", the first song on their first album, reeks of being 10 years past its best-before date: Sarah Daly lays on the ultra-vixen shtick extra thick ("My love leaves a permanent stain/ I'm in love with my digital toy," she informs us with a curled-lip purr) while her band plods away in a PVC-sleek synth-grunge grind that could've easily scored them the opening slot on an Elastica/Garbage bill, provided Republika or Sleeper weren't available. The chorus simply repeats the title "Joy" over and over again, but the feeling is nowhere to be had here, unless you still hang out in bars with ultraviolet lighting. On paper, second track "Lowlife" appears equally dubious: It shares a title with a New Order album and takes its chorus line ("this is a low") from a Blur song. But remarkably, it sounds like the work of another band entirely. With its repeated, mournful guitar figure, motorik rhythm, well-timed violin strokes, and pensive lyrics about mortality, the song is everything its predecessor isn't: vulnerable, heartfelt, and, bleak subject matter aside, quite joyous.
Good thing they made it the first single, though those lured into Violence Is Golden by "Lowlife"'s bookish charms should prepare themselves for a series of shocks and about-faces; the aforementioned 1-2 opening miss/hit combo is but a microcosm of this brazenly inconsistent debut. One band's inspired eclecticism is another's existential crisis: Scanners sound like they can't decide if they want to pump out strobe-lit catwalk background noise for the Cobrasnake set ("Raw"), help wayward goth kids wean themselves off Evanescence and onto PJ Harvey ("In My Dreams", "Changing Times"), sell the records that the Sounds failed to ("Bombs"), or out-scum the Kills and Duke Spirit ("Air 164").
And yet Daly's comfortable shifts from sneering to endearing, combined with Scanners' eagerness to use each song as a blank slate for markedly different arrangements ("Evil Twin" even introduces acoustic raga rhythms and slide-guitar psychedelia), carry with them the hope that the band will cast aside its more contrived poses and discover their natural voice. And in the album's last two songs, they finally find it. And blimey, it sounds a hell of a lot like the Cardigans: "Look What You Started" is a grand country-soul break-up ballad completely out of step with everything that comes before it, but Daly's wistful croon and Mat Mole's gleaming guitar line come together as gracefully as lovers running slow motion in a field; the closing title track serves as the darker sequel where the trysts turn to fists, its waltzing gait given a mean beating by an incessant, scabrous guitar riff. Violence Is Golden may start out dull as brass, but it's got a 24-karat conclusion.
