When 2006's News & Tributes, with its restless genre-surfing and morose aura, didn't move units, 679 dropped the Futureheads, who in turn eagerly started their own label, Nul Recordings. Now, unbound from the shackles of corporate pressure, the Sunderland band finally has a chance to spread its wings, to enjoy the sort of creative freedom artists like Radiohead or NIN have relished, to boldly chase its muse to the ends of the earth. Ladies and gentlemen, the Futureheads present This Is Not the World, an...economy-size power-pop album?
Apparently the backlash from Tributes hasn't scared the band away from penning three-minute pop standards; it's only convinced them to package their songs in a neater, more cohesive fashion. Miffed by Tributes' acoustic guitar sighs and less-than-syncopated textures? Well, World force-feeds the listener with one heaping helping of homogeneous overdriven riffs and fist-pumping choruses after another. The vocals similarly raise the stakes, broadening their focus from the tearfully quotidian to blistering anthems attacking society on the whole, likely a byproduct of their recent career shakeup. Opener "The Beginning of the Twist" may ostensibly refer to a romantic relationship, but Barry Hyde's rallying cry ("It's time to wake up/ It's time to change") feels like snarky self-commentary, foreshadowing the in-your-face persona the band's adopted on World.
Since their self-titled debut, the Futureheads have gone from crafting intricate, mathematical post-punk with a pop edge to crafting full-blown power-pop with a hint of Elvis Costello/Ric Ocasek geek chic. Missing here are most of the Wire and XTC signifiers and the ADD songwriting that fired off one robotic riff after another with Pentium processor precision, verse/chorus structure be damned. The sweeping power chords of songs like "Think Tonight" and the title track will betray nearly every preconception you've had of this band. Not only do these tracks stick to conventional song structures, they even go as far as to anticipate their massive sing-along refrains with dramatic intros and pre-choruses. I haven't checked, but it's likely many of these songs, especially the handful with avalanche-style descending major scale riffs, synch up eerily well with Cheap Trick's "Surrender".
Fortunately, just because the hooks are swollen doesn't mean they're not catchy as hell. While neither as frenetic as the group's debut or as stylistically curious as Tributes, World boasts smart pop sensibilities all the same. "Broke Up the Time" is an unashamed carousel ride around an ultra-sunny riff, not any more guilty than a tongue-in-cheek song like R.E.M.'s "Stand". "Sale of the Century" grinds down a herky-jerky Go4 groove until it's as palatable as a harmless Franz Ferdinand ditty, while standout track "Radio Heart" represents the best possible outcome for the band's new artistic direction. Pinching the meaty guitar slabs from 2006 single "Skip to the End", the track's skewed chord progression and galloping melody make for three minutes of near pop perfection, replete with a Pygmalion-esque confluence of art and love, "a girl with a radio heart." Hyde's lyrics are especially gripping considering how his band's toils somewhere between abstract, cerebral post-punk and mainstream rock, never quite mortgaging one for greater success in the other.
The sad truth, though, is that the Futureheads were never a band that got by solely on hooks, but rather their unorthodox delivery of them. Aside from their endearing Sunderland accents, they've 86'd every ace previously kept up their sleeve. Without the quad-approved a cappella harmonies, explosive stop-start melodies, and edge-of-seat rhythms, these guys can't distinguish themselves quite so clearly from the UK's post-punk hoi polloi anymore. Maybe it's just the subliminal suggestion of the group's moniker, or a revisionist nostalgia for their debut's slap-in-the-face urgency, but World feels sadly complacent coming from a band that once wielded so much restless, forward-thinking innovation. Hopefully the plodding nature of this album means the band's simply stabilizing after some label turmoil, and not, as the weakest parts of World suggest, already running on empty.
