I\u2019ve always been a sucker for a band with a narrative.\u00a0 The music is the heart of the matter, of course, but if the music grabs me at all *and* it\u2019s coupled with an interesting behind-the-scenes story of the people in the band, well, count me in.<\/p>\n
While The Subways\u2019 narrative is fairly complex, their music, to date, is not\u2014it\u2019s melodic punk-pop, thrashy at times but mostly very riff-and-chorus-oriented, with the one really exceptional element being the vocal interplay of singer-guitarist Billy Lunn and bassist-harmony vocalist Charlotte Cooper.\u00a0 In terms of sound, you could do worse than to describe them as what it might sound like if Green Day and The Go-Gos combined into a single power trio.\u00a0 The vocals are where the magic really happens, adding a lushness and texture that\u2019s uncommon for this sort of fairly aggro power-trio attack.<\/p>\n
The context is where the complexity lies.\u00a0 Lunn and drummer Josh Morgan are brothers, and Cooper is the high school girlfriend Lunn drafted to play bass so the three of them could be in a band together.\u00a0 Then Lunn and Cooper got engaged, then they got a record contract, then they made a record, then they toured the UK, and then they (Lunn and Cooper, that is) broke up.\u00a0 And four years later, The Subways are still making records and touring together, because all parties seem to have been wise enough to recognize that the sound this particular trio makes together is unique and special and vital.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
You imagine that the fact that Lunn and Cooper are each others\u2019 exes might add an element of combustibility to the whole thing, and maybe it does at times\u20142008\u2019s All Or Nothing<\/i> certainly had some of the elements of a breakup album\u2014but with Money And Celebrity<\/i>, it seems like Lunn and Cooper have moved on successfully to a new stage of their relationship, now collaborating as extremely compatible and complementary musical partners.<\/p>\n
The irony of my focusing initially on this aspect of Money And Celebrity<\/i> is, of course, that the album itself centers on the theme of modern celebrity culture and how the public has a prurient interest in the lives of people with whom we have no real connection, we\u2019re simply a mob of voyeurs peering in the windows at them.\u00a0 That said, there\u2019s no self-conscious, postmodern irony happening here; The Subways are nothing if not doggedly sincere. <\/p>\n
Certainly, there\u2019s little subtlety and no irony in smash-you-over-the-head party-on jams like \u201cIt\u2019s A Party\u201d and \u201cFriday.\u201d\u00a0 With every track here coming in between 2:42 and 3:37, and not a ballad in sight, this album plays like the relentless soundtrack to a basement-club rock and roll rave.\u00a0 Really, it\u2019s the kind of album that used to be labeled \u201cplay it loud\u201d; at first listen there\u2019s little subtext here, just fat, thrashing chords and in-your-face vocals.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
Ah, but don\u2019t be so quick to judge.\u00a0 Sure, jet-fueled anthems like \u201cWe Don\u2019t Need Money To Have A Good Time\u201d amount to pure adrenaline channeled into melody\u2014but then you realize they\u2019ve snuck a message into the mix: \u201cNot gonna be the fools who don\u2019t know who they are \/ Not gonna be the fools who just say blah blah blah.\u201d\u00a0 And there you have the keys to The Subway\u2019s little universe; this trio knows exactly who they are and they don\u2019t try to be anything else.\u00a0 That authenticity is perhaps their most appealing trait: take it or leave it, they seem to be saying, we\u2019re not trying to impress anybody here, we\u2019re just letting it rip.\u00a0 Call it the Zen of sweat-soaked rock and roll.<\/p>\n
And \u201dCelebrity\u201d actually does get profound for just a moment when Lunn sings of his fame-hungry subject: \u201cShe doesn\u2019t care if you stop and stare \/ She just doesn\u2019t want to be alone anymore.\u201d\u00a0 Figures from Marilyn Monroe to Lindsay Lohan would understand that line instinctively.\u00a0 Lightening things up momentarily, \u201cI Wanna Dance With You\u201d and \u201cPopdeath\u201d are the poppiest tracks here, the former a tender-hearted plea, the latter a surprisingly upbeat elegy for dead popstars, with Cooper\u2019s \u201cyeah yeah yeah\u201ds in the background just the right touch.<\/p>\n
Things get darker and heavier with \u201cMoney\u201d and \u201cKiss Kiss Bang Bang,\u201d before \u201cRumour\u201d comes along to lighten the proceedings up again with a big thrummy anthem.\u00a0 \u201cFriday\u201d follows with a killer riff and catchy chorus rhyming the two emotional poles that dominate throughout this album: elation and frustration.\u00a0 Closing out strong, \u201cLeave My Side\u201d tries hard to be a sweet love ballad on the verses, but there\u2019s trouble in paradise and the choruses explode into a wounded interrogation: \u201cAre you gonna leave my side tonight?\u201d<\/p>\n
The breakneck pace sustained here does feel a little much by the end\u2014or maybe I\u2019m just getting older.\u00a0 The beauty of this album is that, four records into their career, this trio still sounds like a group of kids that just really want to have a good time playing music, and they\u2019ve gotten pretty damned good at it.<\/p>\n
Money And Celebrity<\/i> provides both the continuation of an intriguing narrative and 12 tracks\u2019 worth of solidly entertaining, if not exactly mutilayered, music from one of the tightest and most unique bands on the punk-pop scene today.\u00a0 The Subways\u2019 signature sound is a platform they can use to build whatever sort of career they choose; maybe their songs will start to dig deeper as the band matures, or maybe not.\u00a0 For now, they seem content to be the pedal-to-the-metal house band in sweaty rock and roll clubs all across the UK\u2014and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":30772,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[7704],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-42446","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-the-subways","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/42446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42446"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/42446\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42446"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=42446"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=42446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}