What a post-apocalyptic wasteland we find ourselves in: Like paranoid dystopian survivors hoarding an energy source, we encounter a new band sporting Go4 and Wire touchstones and impulsively proceed to blow its head off rather than risk checking out their MySpace page and unknowingly fall for another French Kicks. Shameful? Maybe, but admittedly so, I didn't hesitate to reach for my shotgun before listening to the debut LP from Britain's the Young Knives.
Festooned with the usual post-punk accoutrements, there's little dancing around the fact these guys posture as rank and file revivalists, especially when frontman Henry Dartnall's vocals ape Colin Newman's down to every inflection and hyperventilated yelp. However, while most of today's bands claiming such influences cash out by framing angular guitars and start-stop rhythms in tried/true pop structures, the Knives remain determined to keep everything too complicated for modern rock radio. Even at their catchiest and sexiest on single "Weekends and Bleak Days (Hot Summer)", the bacchanalia feels both mathematical and unpredictable, like pop run through a random number generator.
While Voices of Animals And Men boasts a lot of artiness for artiness' sake, performative intellectualism meets cavalier looseness on the record to form a heady but entertaining shindig; think of a Wire cover band playing at a wedding. Opener "Part Timer" tempers an uptight, fidgety verse-chorus progression with an asinine breakdown centered around an amateurish bass slide. Likewise, "Here Comes the Rumour Mill" minds its p's and q's, meticulously working its way through sinuous guitar parts before face-planting on a beer-guzzling, power-pop chorus. When the party stops, slower numbers like "Tailors" showcase the band's mettle at crafting proto-emo lullabies with Television Personalities' goofy, "Cor blimey!" charm.
Eventually on Animals and Men the Knives' "cool" genius shtick wears a little thin, leaving them sounding a lot like the garden variety revivalist fodder that's usually shunned. If the ideas aren't coming effusively, such as on "In the Pink" and "Mystic Energy", the band devolves into plodding, droll Brit-pop. On the other hand, over-thinking their post-punk formulas leads to avant-garde upchuck like "She's Attracted To", which features the forgettable Good Charlotte-meets-Johnny Rotten spoken word "Who are these people?/ They are too stupid to be your real parents!" Fortunately Animals and Men manages to toe the line between these two extremes for three-fourths of its duration. Despite offering completely nothing new to the genre, the Knives apply the more-than-one-way-to-eat-a-Reese's strategy to their post-punk dalliances, creating relatively unpredictable art in an otherwise all-too-familiar framework.
