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The Futureheads

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The Futureheads

News and Tributes

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How this Sunderland four-piece could possibly top a debut that trashed the perceived rules of songwriting was anyone's guess. Full of scrapbook innovation, songs seemingly held together with rubber bands and cellotape, furious punk riffs and vocal harmonies, the Futureheads announced themselves with a brilliantly reconceived version of Kate Bush's Hounds of Love, complete with a cappella backing track.

Such was the band's contempt for standard, verse-chorus-verse structures that you wondered whether they had anywhere left to turn. Happily, News and Tributes is a follow-up that somehow manages to deepen that philosophy while shoehorning the wild inventiveness of the music into something more linear and cohesive.

Whereas its predecessor seemed to build the songs inside out, opener Yes/No begins that way before turning outside in as the bass level finally kicks in and the guitars start to chop away. In doing so it signals the band's intentions to demonstrate exactly what can be still be squeezed out of regular, rectangular songs. That's not to say that the Futureheads have sacrificed their daring, however: the likes of single Skip to the End and Burnt still sound like nothing else around at the moment, despite following what for this band is a fairly linear structure.

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