I Like Favours For Sailors.

And god knows what sort of misguided search engine hits that post title will bring my way. It’s true though! In the past few months, it seems like Favours For Sailors have exploded out of nowhere (well, out of some combination of London boroughs, I assume) as one of the best straight-up indie rock bands in the country.

The first time I saw them, you could say my expectations were not high I guess. They were supporting the band who my natural grumpiness and sense of band name-related refinement mean I shall forever refer to as The Dan Ackroyd Band, and from the name alone (Favours For Sailors, I mean), I feared we might have been in for some sorta ‘confrontational’ band – y’know, one who might wear sailor suits, play horrible farty keyboards, instigate some awful kind of forced jollity and generally to their utmost to cause a kerfuffle. Not that there’s anything wrong with that I suppose, but I was TIRED, goddamnit, and I wanted something solid and enjoyable to groove to, not something I’d have to be ‘subjected’ to. (Watch out kids, stuff like this happens as you get older.) Thus my relief must have been palpable – nay visible across all of Islington, like a happy, pastel-coloured cloud – when Favours For Sailors actually turned out to go four mild-mannered fellas with nice Fender guitars, playing quite loudly in a manner very much reminiscent of early Pavement, and making a damn good job of it too. Not a sailorsuit in sight.

Through the filter of a loud, fuzzy sound-mix and a few ales, their sound seemed to be closely anchored off the coast of Slanted & Enchanted land, and indeed, the chugging verses, lilting vocal melodies, slightly unconventional chord progressions and instrumental breakdowns of tunes like “No Room At The Buffet” are pure Malkmus. Such were my thoughts at the time, but ‘Furious Sons’, FFS’s six song debut on Tough Love records is an absolute bloody revelation, transcending such easy reference points not so much by virtue of engaging with the sort of meaty, pro production that Pavement didn’t really get to grips with ‘til album#4, but rather by virtue of simply being really, really good.

There has been such a log-jam in recent years of professional, carefully produced indie-rock product, the vast majority of it crushingly mediocre, that it is often tempting to swear off the whole damn business entirely in favour of the kind of resurgent punk/pop primitivism that’s been increasingly taking up my ear-time recently. Tempting, ever so tempting. Imagine: no longer having to take time out to consider the existence of new opuses by hardworking Beach Boys fans signed to Secretly Canadian, or earnest, bobblehatted ‘songsmiths’ recorded by the guitarist from Deathcab For Cutie on his laptop. A few more minutes each day to enjoy skulking around like a troll, listening to old garage comps or, I don’t know, Venom or something. Wonderful.

But no! To do that would be to miss out on the occasional flat-out WINNER, like this here Favours For Sailors record (or Throw Me The Statue last year). ‘Furious Sons’ is a brief set of songs custom built to remind us that a good band who know how to play their guitar/guitar/bass/drums, who have big, bright, clean production, vaguely literate/ambiguous lyrics and fully developed multi-part songs that venture beyond the four minute mark, can still be SO MUCH FUN when they hit the bullseye and do all that stuff RIGHT for once, with energy and humour and the kind of off-the-cuff musical prowess that makes crappy wouldbe musicians like myself curse their sorry lot in life.

“Erode My Empire” makes for a great opening track – I love the way the lead guitar hooks splurge all over the melodica-assisted verse-chug, and it’s hard not to crack a smile at the lyrical conceit; “empires erode / from the coastline in / soon I’ll be stuck in a square metre in the middle / probably in Nottingham”. It’s great too on the yell-along-at-home chorus, where it sounds like one guy is shouting “burn all the bridges!”, whilst the other guy goes for “burn all the bitches!”, creating an all together superior melding of the two into “burn all the breeches!” Now there’s a shout-out we can all get behind.

The best song though is track # 4, “I Dreamt That I Dreamt That You Loved Me In Your Dreams”. It’s STUNNING. An indie-rock ‘Citizen Kane’ in three minutes fifty-nine seconds. And, like ‘Kane’, it both demands a blow by blow written account and supersedes the need for one in it’s clarity of its intention and expression. It builds moment of awesomeness upon moment of awesomeness like a big, top heavy layer cake for anyone who’s ever enjoyed lively, smart sad-boy indie rock, until it collapses in on itself at just the right moment – instant classic.

If they’d included this song on the record and filled out the rest with recordings of themselves whistling amusing little solos to each other in D#m, ‘Furious Sons’ would still be amongst my favourite releases of the year thus far, but thankfully all the other songs are really good too. “No Room At The Buffet” is another perfectly realised jaunty rocker, whilst the moral conundrums of “The Nihilist Prays” and “Shy Times” reveal a more introspective side of the band’s writing, and “Our Name” does indeed reveal the origin of THAT name, as well as featuring an interesting string-synth and syncopated vocal intro that, along with the looped “whoa-oh-oh”s on “I Dreamt..”, bespeaks the influence of post-Animal Collective experimental pop, adding a definite bit of ‘00s to the band’s ‘90s-centric scrapbook.

Frankly, these six songs are about as strong as a four piece British guitar band’s debut record could possibly get. Good work!

Mp3 > I Dreamt I Dreamt That You Loved My In Your Dreams

Favours For Sailors myspace.

You can buy ‘Furious Sons’ on Cd, vinyl AND mp3 for a mere £6 from Tough Love! Bargain!

Labels: Favours For Sailors, I like