The View - Which Bitch?

The View is clearly a band that loves what they do.

You know the story so far: four council estate urchins, still barely out of their teens, with debauchery as legendary as their lust for life and desire to make the most of their talents. Following the massive success of debut album ‘Hats Off To The Buskers’, the band toured extensively before regrouping with producer Owen Morris at Monmouth Studios in Wales to record album two.

Needless to say the sessions were ‘eventful’, although the surrounding madness actually seems to have kept the Falconer/Webster writing team focused, with half of ‘Which Bitch?’’s songs written in the studio.

Lead single ‘5Rebbeccas’, released in October, was a welcome blast of The View part two, a Sex Pistols-esque wall of guitars powering Kyle’s idiosyncratic delivery and trademark home-grown subject matter. Unfortunately it sold relatively poorly, peaking at 57 in the UK singles chart. So what awaits us on their second long player?

Casually side-stepping the ‘difficult second album’ cliché, The View effortlessly spread their wings with dazzling orchestration (‘Unexpected’), sea shanties (‘Distant Doubloon’), trumpets and guest stars (‘Covers’ and fellow Celtic mumbler Paolo Nutini’s appearance), an ill-advised bout of rapping (‘One Off Pretender’), and a refinement of all we loved about them when they first assaulted our eardrums.

Notable throughout is The View’s continued mythologising of their hometown, and it is this that might just prove to be the band’s biggest legacy. ‘Distant Doubloon’, for example, weaves a mock historical tale of Dundee using local characters and locations, a refreshing change from the standard indie soundbites of their peers.

Mischievous melodies and chaotic choruses abound, and while this is perhaps not the masterpiece they have in them, time is on their side. For now, here is evidence enough that a classic does indeed lurk within The View.