Following various singles including Fixer Upper, a set of newer, sharp, funny, talky, wordy and witty post-punk-funk numbers in this debut LP by the Leeds quartet, filled with ironic observation about Britishness, echoing some delivery elements of the Fall and Sleaford Mods. Fixer Upper and the excellent Dark Days are not recycled here, but there’s plenty more to enjoy, with pops at all kinds of attitudes through the impressive wordplay of frontman James Smith, whether that’s upper, middle, or lower classes, as well post-Brexit alt-right , patronising attitudes and various forms of hypocrisy not least in the title track, or “knobheads Morris dancing to Sham 69” in Dead Horse, the voice of an arrogant businessman in Quarantine the Sticks, the comfortably off foodies “growing your own lettuces in the potholes on the road” (Payday) which are are all catchy singalongs as well rammed with ironic nail-sharp observations.
The record is chock full with Smith’s rapid-fire, smart-alec verbals, and in pace and style it mostly fast and furious, the antithesis of recent other indie darlings Dry Cleaning with their minimal, surreal internal dialogues, or the sheer silly fun of Wet Leg, as The Overload album progresses, there’s also some more sensitive, and surprising nuance. Tall Poppies appears to be tale with a character like The Undertones’ My Perfect Cousin or The Jam’s David Watts, a jealousy-inducing handsome, talented, popular-with-all-the-girls. athletic character. here, also with a third-person narrative, it takes on a much more wistful tone, describing the life of one who, instead of heading for great things, chooses to settle down in his home town doing a mundane estate agent job, and whose life turns ordinary before ending, with sympathetic music to match, in a sudden, if slow-motion tragedy. And final track, 100% Endurance, takes a rather emotional, metaphysical turn, reflecting on the turmoil of it all, perhaps fuelled by the pandemic, that “Death is coming for us all, but not today,” and “all you ever needed to exist has always been within you”. Plenty of of emotion to unpack here in between all the clever jokes. Out on Universal Island.
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