London 4 piece South have actually been around since 2001, and they’re about to release their 4th album ‘You Are Here’, and listening to this album I felt a bit guilty that I hadn’t heard of this bands music before. South it seems are just one of those bands who’s name you see advertised in the back of NME seemingly touring the shit out of Britain forever and a day but never actually get round to or excited enough to actually go and see, when they may well be the best band in the universe, and maybe to some people that have bothered to go and see South and buy their previous 3 albums they may well be. I mean I vaguely remember reading at the time that they were picked up and signed by James Lavelle and his Mo’Wax label when they first came out, mainly due to the fact that it was a bit odd that an indie rock band were signed to a largely hip-hop/trip-hop/dance record, and a bit of a cult one at that. But then a bands whose last album was entitled ‘Adventures In The Underground Journey To The Stars’, its clear that South are a bit more adventurous, both in terms of travelling around the world a bit as they have done and searching for a new way to make their records, and inventive than you’re average indie band. Razorlight and The Kooks this band aren’t and all the better for it too.The title of their 4th album ‘You Are Here’ carries on with the ‘adventure’ and ‘journey’ theme that was hinted at in the title of their last album. And it seems that having spent some time last year touring with Elbow, some of their influence seems to have rubbed of on them and they’ve produced another adventurous, soaring, progressive, catchy yet emotional collection of songs which chime, charm, and float past your ears. But there’s still a defiant British indieness to this album, despite the slight transatlantic sound.‘You Are Here’ starts of with the daggers at dawn piano, stabbing trumpets, and hurriedly strummed guitars, introspective, Smashing Pumpkins-esque, at least in the vocals stake, sorrowful yet heady sounding ‘Wasted’, the album wasted no time in setting itself up, and then becoming more open on the appropriately titled ‘Opened Up’ the singer whispers in our ears us ‘we’re all the same in our different ways’, its these sort of opposing couplets that has a go at psychology and questions who we are and when we’re going, which crop up throughout the album, which some people might say they’re a bit studenty but they sound charming and cleverly put together throughout this album, then theirs a key change and the song becomes even more brighter. ‘Better Things’ is even more perkier as the guitar chugs a long in a world of its own, its one of those songs that you swear you’ve heard before, and another of those wonderful couplets from the singer as he sings ‘the days seem to last forever but the weeks fly by.’ Maybe that’s how they feel when they’ve released 4 albums but no one seems to have noticed. Then ‘The Pain’ sounds oddly like Jimmy Eat World jamming with Pet Shop Boys, there’s an emo-crossed-with-new-romantic-electro tinged sound to this upbeat track. ‘She’s Half Crazy’ is the best track on the album as it sounds like 2 songs bolted together as the jazz piano and horns clash with the dancing guitars. ‘There Goes Your Life’ definitely has some of the indie-experimentation of Field Music, and ends up being a little bit of a pop romp. Then there’s the finale of ‘Beautiful Freaks’ of the glacial guitars and hypnotic strings and echoey vocals really see’s South spread their wings going into a more progressive direction and hinting at Cave In’s brilliant 2003 album ‘Antenna.’Maybe South will always be the perennial underachievers, not in making records that they do with confidence, but in terms of breaking through to the national consciousness, which this album has the potential to do. So South are now on to their 4th album and you still haven’t heard of them, but as they say its better late than never.
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