Release Date: Apr 25, 2011
Genre(s): Pop/Rock, Alternative/Indie Rock, Alternative Pop/Rock
Record label: Big Flame
Music Critic Score
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These guys are the sort of band that make people like me feel like the flimsy, useless hipsters we are. Solid, warm and human, critical sneers will bounce off them like a seven-stone skinny-jeaned rugby tackle off a bouncy castle. From name to business model (three years of hard live graft and writing) to influences (Cash, Springsteen, Dylan) they’re classicists to the core.Thing is, if you’re going to follow the lines of tradition so closely, you need a pretty bright individual spark to colour them in, if ‘familiar’ isn’t going to become ‘forgettable’.
There are two reasons music critics tend to talk about class. Firstly, it is typically January and regardless of the merits of the new British Sea Power album, it simply won’t fill that many column inches. Secondly, it gives the impression that we’re writing about something more important than popular culture. After all, even if The Vaccines do turn out to be a vital component of the next decade or so it will only be because they have written some pretty songs which got played lots on the radio.
For better or worse, welcome to the new Mumford & Sons. Martin Aston 2011 NME’s description, "life-affirming graft rock", kicks off the press release for Young Rebel Set’s debut album, so presumably both label and band see it as a compliment, even if the word ‘graft’ suggests something workmanlike and forced. Actually, the blurb does make of a virtue of "three years schlepping across the country in the back of the van", as if this gave their songs a tension and authenticity that would otherwise be lacking.