Rumble Strips - 'Girls And Weather' (Island) Released 10/09/07

This one has been a long time coming. Not only have the Rumble Strips taken well over a year to go from their first single in late 2005 to ‘Girls And Weather,’ their debut album – but this Devon foursome are ready to snatch the glowsticks from the fluorescent adolescents’ hip electro beats and make music sound real again. In the meantime, bands like Mystery Jets and Vincent Vincent and the Villains were tipped to be the next saviours, but 2006 came and went without much of a stir with the kids – remember Thamesbeat anyone? 

Although the best thing about all of these bands, very much including The Rumble Strips, is that they don’t sound like anyone or anything else. Strips singer Charlie Waller does actually sound uncannily like Mystery Jets’ Blaine Harrison, and there’s a similar fondness for bursting harmonies, but it all stops at the surface of comparison. The Rumble Strips are at the helm of something completely their own, and as it so happens, completely amazing. Clearly they’re masters of control. They took their time and crafted an album full of eccentricity and freedom, but tempered it with care and sensibility. ‘Clouds’ and ‘Alarm Clock’ feature a full-on assault of the trumpet and sax peppered throughout the album, but never once do they cross over to total ska territory. Not that brass is eccentric - it’s just tricky and easy to fuck up.

What makes “eccentric” the go-to word to describe The Rumble Strips’ sound is not any weird Moroccan instrumentation or quirky sampling. There’s none of that. Waller and his crew are slightly off their heads in how they make really simple pop songs sound quirky and unhinged, but at the same time, still sound like really simple pop songs.  The obvious standout is 'Boys And Girls In Love', which sounds like Bill Haley and the Comets having a good old-fashioned knees-up in Tavistock. A lot of their inspiration comes from the 50s and its direct, to-the-point attitude – just boys singing verse and chorus about girls to a snappy beat and soft guitars.  ‘Don’t Dumb Down’ does it perfectly. 

Sounds suspicious, as if The Rumble Strips are just retro re-hashers of what’s been done – but that’s definitely not so.   ‘Time’ has the ridiculous grandeur of the self-possessed modern music climate. And opener ‘No Soul’ goes from stripped-down rumination to biting dance party in a flash, with Wailer full of self-deprecation and claims that I ain’t got no soul.  Fortunately he’s very wrong. This debut is overflowing with heart and soul and is worth more than any comparisons. Remember Nu Rave anyone?