Send "Athlete " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Popmatters |
 I was never much a fan of the English band Athlete—the bunch of well-to-do windswept indie boys from Deptford, London. After ten years and the arrival of a sincere best-of collection, little has changed. The noughties were a decade that saw the British musical landscape clogged up with a post-modern angst and a more aesthetically conscious approach to ‘indie’ music than the decade preceding it. There was Scottish post-punk from art-school kids in Franz Ferdinand; the droll re-appropriation of Radiohead and Jeff Buckley in the form of Coldplay; the over-aestheticised camp of the drug-addled from the Darkness; the plain thrashing of Sheffield suburbanites the Arctic Monkeys; short-lived and catchy one-hit wonders such as Hard-Fi; as well as horrific failure in the form of the hackneyed Rooster. In this time, rarely did I feel entrenched in the country’s musical culture. It was frustrating. I was finally coming of age and heading out to clubs, only to realise that the music playing in my bedroom was considerably superior to the drivel that was congesting the stereo systems of the mainstream clubs on the British isle. Of course, there was a rare moment that came with the success of the Libertines. Pete Doherty and Carl Barat’s now defunct venture was a masterpiece of the bruised ego. The duo’s volatile stage personas fed into the subtly poetic lyricism of their debut, Up the Bracket, and their eponymous follow-up, which bore one of the most un-ironic album covers of the decade, and which was also fittingly a self-referential pop/rock treasure. And although the band produced few songs together, they were unrelenting in their ability to stick with you long after the discs had stopped spinning....full text |
| Bbc |
| Much maligned by critics and connoisseurs alike, Athlete have always been subject to a certain degree of snobbery when it comes to their music. Since the start of their career in 1999, despite a Mercury Music Prize nomination and an Ivor Novello Award in 2006 – or perhaps because of these things – the Deptford quartet have struggled to turn their commercial success into critical acclaim. Instead, after the release of first album, Vehicles & Animals, they found themselves lumped in with the numerous purveyors of British mediocrity – Turin Brakes, Starsailor, Keane et al – and have struggled to break free ever since. It’s easy to see how that happened. The catchy, hook-filled You’ve Got the Style aside, the three other songs from that first album included on this retrospective – El Salvador, Beautiful and Westside – do little more than confirm Athlete’s place amongst the slurry of dreary indie-pop that the UK seems so fond of producing. These songs are not awful, but do sit quite happily alongside those other bland, middle-of-the-road bands. Yet, when the band released second album, Tourist, there was a slight shift. They embraced their mainstream, commercially viable status and used it to somehow craft an album that, actually, was a remarkable improvement on their debut. Wires and Tourist, for example, are both fragile lullabies that glow with a previously unheard soulful tenderness. The anthemic torch-bearing of Half Light and Twenty Four Hours might have been aimed for the top of the charts (where this album debuted on its week of release), but there’s nothing wrong with that if it’s done, as it is here, with passion and a sense of integrity....full text |
| Contactmusic |
| Where other bands have created iconic tunes which instantly grab your attention and create a wave of excitement when they are resurrected in venues or club nights, Athlete don't have this. They may be an Ivor Novello winning band with a platinum selling album, but they still blend into their sector. There isn't anything to get excited about, and this is essentially the vibe of this whole album. Listening to what we know to be to be their 'greatest hits' under a slightly less tragic guise of 'singles' only confirms first thoughts. Here we have a collection of drab, melancholy, and middle of the road offerings throughout. Willing each track to pick up and develop a bit of motivation, but all it does is reply, 'whatever'. An extensive double CD with 32 offerings (admittedly some of these are remixes), there's a lot to get through. The more iconic Athlete anthems such as 'Wires', 'El Salvador', and 'Hurricane' have obviously made the cut. 'You Got The Style' actually features twice, and it has to be said that the remix styles it into quite a cool chill out lounge track. 'Hurricaned (Dub mix)' shouldn't have been remixed in the first place as there is no point to it at all. Bordering on a Paul Simon-esque vocal with a deep bass riff behind it doesn't make a remix. It may have the typical rhythm for dub, but feels half done. It wasn't needed to pad out the album, there's plenty already, and would fans really want this?...full text |
Athlete lyrics Music videoclips
|
| |||||||||||||
