You Animals - Crimes, Creeps & Thrills Review

Remember the days when you listened to Feeder, Ash or The Subways and thought they were THE BEST THING EVER? Not just a stepping stone towards The Replacements, The Ramones and other more 'respectable' ilk but wholly original outfits who condensed a perennially optimistic release of teenage angst into three minute 30 second snippets of pop perfection.

You Animals make me feel like they may well be THE BEST THING EVER too. Of course in the cold light of day this Derbyshire-based six piece aren’t worthy of such hyperbole, but for the 50 minute duration of their debut LP you’ll be damned to hear me saying anything to the contrary.

I write this review in the absence of said sugar coated indie rock, hence there are a few negative aspects of Crimes, Creeps & Thrills worth mentioning.

It contains a song entitled ‘Every Day Is Like A Friday Night’ which when you really think about it, is still a complete crock of shit. Lead singer Ryan Needham cannot, unless in instances of extreme rarity, leave room in a track where his fervent holler doesn’t feature through the dual strategy of elongating his vowels to riiiiiiiiiiiidiculous extents or inserting festival-friendly cries of “woah woah” or “badda ba badda” to fill the gaps.

Furthermore, several tracks are bookended by unnecessary stabs at ambient interlude which only serve to make you wish You Animals would bloody well get on with it and deliver their next could-be single. And what a catalogue they have to choose from: ‘What A Shame Lorraine’ bristles with all the energy its endearingly silly chorus line affords it; ‘Halfway To Heartbreak’ grates spiky six string over deliriously squelching synth; ‘Western Stab’ makes a decent fist of lovelorn sentiment. This stuff is seemingly made for Radio 1’s summertime playlist as was....full text Maybe it’s just part of me growing out of it and it passing me by, but there does seem to be a lack of good, fun, poppy “indie” guitar music around at the moment. I stress the word “good” because there is clearly plenty of “indie” about, much of it just tends to be ever so slightly dull.

Anywhere, here we have the debut album from Derby based 6-piece You Animals. A lovely mesh of summery upbeat synths and guitars, with crashing drums and shouty vocals. As with many young bands these days, there’s plenty of The Strokes influence in here, as well some Mumm-Ra and maybe a touch of The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart and Tokyo Police Club.

It has it’s awkward moments. There are a few instrumentals between tracks that don’t really serve much purpose, and by the end it does feel a little long. Yet none of the tracks feel especially weak compared to the rest, and at it’s best it’s excellent. It is impossible not to dance along to ‘What A Shame, Lorraine’ or ‘Halfway To Heartbreak’, and ‘Western Bridge’ and closer ‘Shotgun Valentine’ are wonderfully heartfelt.

At the end of the day, there is little original or massive inspiring here, but given You Animals clearly aren’t trying to be either that’s fine. It is does what it says on the tin, it’s great fun with the odd cheeky tug at the heart strings, and it does it really rather well....full text