The Rakes
Capture/Release

THE REVIEW

You will read the album title, you will read the band name, you will read the first three lines of this useless review and, as usual, you will assert in your confused and intellectual mind: “What a drag, another 'The' at the beginning of the name and the 'S' at the end, again British, again losers, again pop punk 'art' wave, another 20 euros down the drain...”.

Yes, it's like that once again. They're from London (what a surprise!) and they make the usual stuff not much different from the usual junk of Bloc Party, Maximo Park, and Franz Ferdinand. Even though we have resigned ourselves to seeing these debuts come out every week, we know very well that among them there's sometimes something catchy, something enjoyable. We are talking about a good debut that, even if similar to its peers, often makes you tap your foot, hum along, and bang your head against the window of your brand-new car.

The tracks all follow the same wavelength and feature the voice of a certain Alan Donohoe, similar to Strokes/Futureheads. The influences are therefore the usual: the '80s, new wave, '77 punk, and post-punk in general, thus passing through names like Buzzcocks, Gang Of Four, The Fall, Wire... In this Capture/Release, we find tracks like “Retreat”, “Binary Love”, “Work, Work, Work (Pub, Club, Sleep)”, “Terror!” that immediately take us back in time thanks to splendid guitar riffs and classic eighties drumming. But in all this, there's the touch of Paul Epworth, already a mentor of Bloc Party and Maximo Park.

We can thus finally say that this is an acutely playful pop album, with great reflections in the lyrics of a sentimental nature or concerning everyday life stories, an album simple, but not too banal, recommended to the youngsters who want to imitate the English lads, and to the older wavers who never forget the evenings spent on the couch listening to Marquee Moon by Television.