Favours for Sailors - Furious Sons Album Review

Review of Favours for Sailors' mini album Furious Sons.

Favours for Sailors are a new 4 piece Indie band from London. Backed by Dananananaykroyd, who handpicked them to tour with them on their southern leg of their recent tour. They bring us their debut mini album 'Furious Sons'. From the strum of the first chord it was impossible not hear the comparisons with the plethora of Indie bands with a pop sensibility that are tartin' about at the minute. It's a lively, rampant and catchy affair that will get the folks at Radio 1 wetting their panties. You know the sound of credible pop, they play instruments so can be marketed as raw and non manufactured, the polished, yet troubled group of musicians that look good in denim and seem to have fallen out of bed into the new Indie band Uniform. In short Edith Bowmans Wet Dream! Fantastic eh, just what the charts need! Favours for Sailors are just more of the same indie pop trash, currently being milked to death by young male musicians in the hope of making it big. As with the sound of Brit Pop in the 90's, eventually you have enough shit copy cat bands that the whole scene falls over due to the weight of its own bloated cash-filled belly.

Shy Times has a rolling Drum Beat, similar to those of Matt Helders from the Artic Monkeys. Small Drum fills to carry us along, with constant strumming of guitar chords desperately seeking to generate some sense of melody to be topped off with a too cool for school lyrical delivery. Erode my Empire, No Room at the Buffet and I dreamed that you dreamt that you loved me in your dreams, are relentless indie pop tracks, heavily influenced by the American side of Indie. Yet Favours for Sailors are miles away from the brilliance of current American Indie bands like Vampire Weekend or Born Ruffians. It's all about the catchy chorus, lyrics delivered with pace and a well placed Oy, but its just so laboriously mediocre that frankly it sounds like its only one step away from the hands of the dicks in suits. The Nihilist Prays is a song that could sit comfortably on The Cribs third album, Men's Needs, Women's Needs, Whatever, demonstrating that Favours for Sailors haven't perhaps bothered too much with the ground work of developing their own sound, so much as developing a sound that's conveniently already current and popular, further more gravitas to my distain. It's the wrong way round for me when its music to make money rather than music for music's sake!

In conclusion this is Indie by numbers. Nick a riff from the Cribs, borrow a melody from the Arctic Monkeys, rip off a drum fill from the Strokes and you have Favours for Sailors. I wouldn't mind if the bands they've chosen to emanate hadn't already stolen the sounds of the Indie bands before them. Don't get me started on the term Indie! There is nothing new or exciting about them, they're just a bad photocopy. If you like the bands that NME recommend, you would like this album and would probably enjoy it for the same shallow reasons that you worship the cribs. There cool right? I see this as another step in the direction of making Guitar based bands a fashion accessory. They probably would be better off giving sailors favours; I can foresee more longevity in that than their pop career!

Lisa Entwistle