Radio 4 – ‘Stealing of a Nation’ (City Slang) Released 13/09/04

When Gigwise caught up with New York’s Radio 4 a couple of years ago in a dank pub down a Mancunian back alley, frontman Anthony Roman confessed that Manchester bands had provided them with much inspiration when fine tuning their sound.

This is massively evident in excellent opener ‘Party Crashers’ whose drums sound suspiciously like New Order’s ‘True Faith’ and it doesn’t get any less suspicious when track 2 is called Transmission. Yet this is definitely an American, or more acutely a New York band’s album.

With song titles like ‘State of Alert’, ‘Nation’ and ‘Shake the Foundation’ it’s obvious and inevitable where this band are finding some of their political rhetoric from. Yet the great thing about Radio 4, and this was true of their previous album 'Gotham', that despite having a menacing anti-government undertone to their clatter it doesn’t stop them from producing some ****ing great songs that you can shake your ass to.

Disco beats, and tom-toms are the order of the day, basslines that move your pants and the odd retro 808 sounding hihat sample proliferate. ‘Absolute Affirmation’ takes up the baton where ‘Save Our City’ left off and the brilliant ‘(Give Me All Your) Money’ leaves the  stratosphere with it, and my god there’s a certain Cher-type vocal effect slipping in! Don’t worry though, the similarities with the eternally youthful one end there, what with some ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ woo woos and lofi synth lines, as well as a driving rhythm section you’ll be out of your red wig and collagen injections in no time.

By the time the album closes with the sophisticated sounding ‘Coming Up Empty’ (where Roman surprisingly sounds more like The Faint’s Todd Baechle) you can’t help but think that this is another brilliant and impressive album from Radio 4. Tune in.