The Young Knives - XTC meet the Gang of Four

You can’t go wrong with a band that dress like Vic Reeves and sound like both Gang of Four and XTC. Doubly good. The Young Knives are the undisputed champions in this (admittedly not hotly contested) field. Another good reason to love them is that their bassist calls himself The House of Lords.

Voices of Animals and Men (and I think that’s an Adam and the Ants song but we’ll gloss over that) is the follow up to 2002’s The Young Knives Are Dead.
The band look like they wear a lot of moleskin and corduroy. They probably relax at home in smoking jackets and cravats whilst cradling a vintage tawny port and a fine cigar. On stage though, it’s all New Wave gurning, twin vocals and cleverly meshing bass guitar and drums. They’ve got a really good stripped down sound but it still feels like they’re hitting their instruments really hard. And that’s good.

Andy Gill from Gang of Four produced the lp and one of the things that the two bands share is one speaking voice behind another vocal. Gang of Four did it on Anthrax while The Young Knives Half Timer follows the Trainspotting’s anti consumer rant of “choose leisure wear, matching luggage…” theme with the deadly, bitter humour of
”A Salary…smash the system from within
Get yourself a promotion and then take your children to the zoo
For the weekend, with the extra cash”

The lyrics are really good and just need to be sung in slightly mannered and pompous (but still punk rock) style. The Decision has
“I wore the blue and the green
I mixed the matt and the sheen
That’s not the way to be seen…..
I am the Prince of Wales. I am the Prince of Wales”.

This is clever, literate stuff and like British Sea Power they seem to be a band with some ambition. The Manic Street Preachers had a similar approach to the first line of their songs. Manics lyrics such as “Libraries gave us power” (from A Design For Life) and “I am an Architect” (from Faster) simultaneously amuse and enrage but also demand that you listen. Public Enemy did it by having jaw droppingly great song titles like Night Of The Living Baseheads.

She’s Attracted To has a Park Life feel to it with it’s “I’ve met some bone idols in my time” lyrics and sung/spoken lines. The meet the parents and walk dogshit into their house scenario spills out into the street as singer Henry Dartnell bellows “You were screaming at your mum while I was punching your dad.” Exactly how a single should sound.

Loughborough Suicide’s “I want to do it on the Tennis Court
I want to do it where they’re playing sport” is a fine companion lyric (maybe a young friend?) for Belle and Sebastienne’s “Now he’s throwing discus for Liverpool and Widnes” (from The Stars of Track and Field, a paean to athletics and rumpy pumpy, from their second album, If You’re Feeling Sinister.

Gang of Four were musically adventurous and ahead of their time. 27 years later it seems strange to remember that there were bands that were determined to make difficult and absolutely political music and could have a backstage argument about the class struggle and flavours of crisp. Now we’re all too busy watching big tellys and hoovering up consumer goods. The Gang of Four mixed disgust, rage and bewilderment at what was going on around them with Art School theory and Marxism but they also sung about the process. So if you’re going to sing a love song then there’ll be another voice putting another view, or stripping away the meaning. Actually if you were going to sing a love song then you wouldn’t do what the Gang of Four did and call it Love like Anthrax

At Home He’s A Tourist is capitalism and nightclubs, and condom commodification.
“Out on the disco floor
That’s where they make their profit
With the things they sell
To help you cop off.”

It’s odd to remember the Packetgate argument with the BBC when they were due to appear on TOTP. The BBC objected to the line “the rubbers you hide in your top left pocket”. The John Peel session version has “Durex “ rather than “Rubbers” so there had already been some self censorship. The band offered to replace the line with “Packet” but the BBC insisted that the only word acceptable to a family audience, pre watershed and pre safe sex would be “Rubbish”. The band didn’t agree and were dropped from the show.

The first 4 XTC albums are consistently high in quality and imagination, mannered vocals and top notch playing….a bit like the Young Knives then. If there was to be an XTC song that linked the two groups it would have to be Respectable Street with it’s great lyric

“Avon lady fills the creases
When she manages to squeeze
In past the caravans
That never move from their front gardens”

Obviously and irrefutably, Buzzcocks were the ultimate Punk singles artists, but I don’t think XTC were far behind. I don’t need to argue the point really. Just look at their first five singles: Science Friction, This Is Pop, Are You Receiving Me? Life Begins At The Hop, Making Plans For Nigel.

I was right wasn’t I?