Favours For Sailors - Furious Sons

Our review
Customer reviews
Press release

5...according to our Brian on Thu 09 Apr, 2009.

Quite taken with this lavish 12"/CD set from Favours For Sailors called Furious Sons. They apparently met in Cornwall yet couldn't sound more Californian college rock. Mid-period Pavement, Television, later GBV, Sammy USA & early Jet Plane Landing spring to mind etc. A 6 track collection of chugging, hugely melodic good-time indie rock loaded with cracking guitar hooks and duelling lines that go ZINNNGGG all over the shop, the bouncy West coast style lyrics that remind me during 'No Room At the Buffet' of the spirit of the first Weezer album, Franz at their sunniest or Lemonheads at their most effortless. The quality of tunesmithery throughout is astoundingly high. It's an old classic sound they're mining but they do it with such aplomb and easygoing love - these tremendously fine tunes are stand-alone slacker pop gems. Seriously, it took two hours for us to wade through a pile of excrement posing as new releases to get to this and the moment these songs spat out of the speakers, I knew we had reached a better land where everything's cool forever. Lovely gatefold package, like those Situationistitsistists 10"s with the CD counterpart mounted on a "nipple". Yum!

6 track gatefold 12" and CD set mini album. The story of how Favours For Sailors came to be, begins not in the murky confines of a Cornish tavern, but when Alex (bass) arrived in London with a rucksack full of dreams and is reunited with university friend Jon (guitar and vocals), who had recently arrived in the capital after securing a lucrative editorial job with The Methodist Recorder.The two start playing together in a disused leather factory, forging an early post-hardcore sound of unplayable, mathy songs about chance encounters between witches and cowboys. Slowly this sound matures into something leaner and more melodic as they channel their collective love of The Cars and Television into gleaming power pop.The band takes shape as they are joined by full-time guitar hero Matthew Hayward (aka Maltese Falcon). Shows with the likes of Foals and Islands follow, and the band’s line up is cemented with the addition of drummer Daniel Starza Smith.Debut release, mini-album Furious Sons, was recorded with Rory Brattwell (ex-Test Icicles) and is released on Tough Love Records (Health, Situationists and William). Crashing guitars, anthemic choruses and periodic shouts defines the sound of Furious Sons. The record bursts open with Erode my Empire: a song that begins with a nod to the bands more hardcore roots (a screamed “BA-BOOM!), before morphing into wistful power pop pegged to the opening lyrical gem of, “Empires erode from the coastline in / and I'll be left in a square metre in the middle / probably in Nottingham”.Jon’s lyrics and vocal delivery are both world-weary and resigned young-Englishman – maudlin, yet brimming with colourful imagery and rendered optimistic by the band’s uplifting, melodic instincts. Scottish sensations and acolytes, Dananananaykroyd handpicked Favours to tour with them on the Southern leg of their recent tour. This opened up yet more new audiences to the band, much of whom turned into loyal fans.With Furious Sons due for release in March and a string of shows scheduled for this year, it looks like the time has come for Favours For Sailors to shine.

Tracks:

Erode My Empire
No Room At The Buffet
The Nihilist Prays
I Dreamt That I Dreamt That You Loved Me In You Dreams
Shy Times
Our Name

Be the first to review this record. Best reviewer each month gets £10 off their next order!