South
Adventures In The Underground Journey To The Stars

I would have bet a palace on the Londoners South, who in 2000 were the authors of one of the most electrifying debuts of recent years. It's true, they didn't invent anything new since it was a reshuffling of cards already widely played in Albion, but in that album, there were enough ideas coexisting to build a piece of a career on it. Instead, South made no calculations and released everything immediately in a lethal blend of brit-pop combined with a sense of melody rarely found in the multitude of contemporary bands. Just two years later, the following "With The Tides" marked a step back, settling into a quiet routine typical of those who have already fired their best shots.

Having reached the so-called difficult third album, unfortunately, our friends still seem to be in search of lost inspiration. To make it a joke, one might justify them by saying they spent their best energies searching for an album title inversely proportional to the simplicity of their moniker.
Speaking more seriously, we can affirm without fear of contradiction that we are facing a band of honest craftsmen playing an artificial pop-rock of average quality and despite everything - well, there’s no need to be too ominous - the light turned on about seven years ago hasn't gone out entirely yet.

Sometimes it seems like listening to the less intimate Coldplay, other times they flirt with Starsailor, New Order peep through with their techno-electronic strides, or even Coral, Doves, Electric Soft Parade, or Turin Brakes. Okay, nothing wrong with that, especially since, in some passages, they even seem superior to their more famous, celebrated, and media-exposed compatriots.
The problem is that in the UK, a dozen albums of this caliber are released every month, and another problem, this time indeed difficult to solve, is that we still have that remarkable debut echoing in our ears where the benchmark was the best Stone Roses and where the aforementioned bands could at most elicit a compassionate smile.

I would have bet a palace on South. And I would have lost it.