The Sunshine Underground - 'Nobody's Coming To Save You' () Released 01/02/10

It seems to be industry standard these days that a band’s cycle of write album, release album, tour album should last about 18 months before it starts all over again. Whether this is because the bands are so bursting with creativity that they can’t wait to get more material out, or because their record labels want to make sure they ride the crest of any wave of success and squeeze as much money out of the record-buying public as possible, is a moot point. The Sunshine Underground, however, have broken with the trend and waited nigh on four years since the arrival of debut album Raise The Alarm to release this, their second effort.

In this musical genre, it’s probably no bad idea. High octane indie dance is never going to stay with you into your old age; you won’t walk past many old people’s homes and hear The Prodigy’s 'Smack My Bitch Up' wafting through the open windows. Push out too much too soon and either people will get bored, or you’ll run out of ideas.

And indeed, 'Nobody’s Coming To Save You' comes across as more considered and well-rounded as a result of its longer gestation. Opening track ‘Coming To Save You’, from which the album gets its name, takes the bits of The Enemy that made you think you’d like them before they turned out to be crap, and forces them through a Sunshine Underground mould, whilst both 'One By One', and especially 'Spell It Out', sound like they’ve had the odd Muse LP on the stereo while they sat around thinking up ideas for the new record.

There are a few songs here, 'We’ve Always Been Your Friends' and 'Here It Comes' among them, which show The Killers what could have happened after Hot Fuss if they had had the patience to take a step back and wait for stronger material to arrive (or the good grace to bugger off if it didn’t). 

After a midpoint interlude reverting to original formula, focus switches away from four-to-the-floor dance beats and on to heartstring-tugging melody. 'Change Your Mind' is this album’s attempt at another 'Borders', and though it doesn’t quite hit the same mark, it isn’t far away. 'Any Minute Now' then breaks things down even more, almost into ballad territory, and probably ensures that singer Craig Wellington won’t be short of offers to warm his tour bus bed up for him, should he so require.

'The Messiah', finally, has probably been written to be as much a set closer as an album closer, with a soft-hearted beginning building up to the sort of epic, pounding crescendo that could be the back drop to a film scene where people flee a beach in slow motion as a World War II fighter plane rakes gunfire across it. Arguably the strongest track on here.

With 'Nobody’s Coming To Save You', The Sunshine Underground have tried to take a genre famed for being throwaway, and make the best, most long-lasting set of material they can out of it. In this, they haven’t done a bad job.