First impressions do Oxford four-piece This Town Needs Guns few favours.
Firstly, their debut album, ‘Animals’, features 13 tracks, each named after a different – you got it – animal. Oh, stop, my aching sides. Concept albums are one thing, a complete lack of titling effort quite another – it’s not like the songs are ostensibly about creatures of any kind. Then there’s the lead quote on the accompanying press release, often to be taken with a pinch but, nonetheless, ambitious to say the least in this case: “forget Radiohead, Oxford is soon to be remembered as the city where [TTNG] began its rise to success”.
So much hyperbole, then, but it takes but seconds of ‘Animals’’ opener, ‘Chinchilla’, for scepticism to be laid to rest, at least temporarily. The track’s twisty guitar lines stir thoughts of Maps & Atlases and fellow townsfolk Foals (another animal name – coincidence, or have these song titles another meaning?), while vocalist Stuart Smith’s slightly Americanised tones suit the piece well – he’s no Charlie Busted… sorry, Fightstar, in other words. It’d be wrong to not mention Owls, too, as TTNG are obviously indebted to the work of Tim Kinsella.
‘Baboon’ adds drama to the fold – here, Smith’s vocals sink into the mix, as playfully adventurous fret work is balanced by the kind of crisply precise drumming that’s made acts like Russian Circles such a must-see in the live arena. Everything is meticulously positioned, arranged to a tee; as such one could accuse TTNG of a lack of heart, but in Smith they’ve a conduit for emotion missing in so many bands pigeonholed as math-rock. If Foals’ Yannis Philippakis is all wild eyes and extravagant gestures, Smith is his quiet cousin, going about his business in a no less affecting fashion, but he’s less likely to take your eye out.
As an older track of theirs, ’26 Is Dancier Than 4’, proved – get it on TTNG’s split EP with Cats And Cats And Cats – the group aren’t afraid to ‘dumb down’ their accomplished proficiency to a pop level, where those alienated by complex time signatures can get a taste for such hip-twisting workouts without fear of doing themselves a injury. ‘Panda’ could pass for a gentler Minus The Bear (more animal parallels… the mystery deepens), and ‘Crocodile’ is a tender ballad falling near the album’s close. Come that closer, the chiming ‘Zebra’ (an echo of sorts of Björk’s ‘Vespertine’-era music box material), things become clearer.
First impressions usually count for nothing, and any doubts have been forgotten permanently.
