The Rakes - Capture / Release (2005)

Debut from another well-recieved, nervy UK post-Wire guitar pop band.

As of this writing, the meme spreading like memefire through the UK press seems to be that the Rakes are doing for London's indie denizens what Mike Skinner did for its chavs-- making mountains of their molehilly tribulations and turning music's often abstracted focus onto a particular modern niche. And it's true that everything about their debut, Capture/Release, screams NOW, from the nervous post-Wire guitars familiar from Franz Ferdinand and Kaiser Chiefs, to the tattoos-under-starched-shirts lyrical purview, to the Paul Epworth production. Unfortunately, Capture/Release might be the victim of bad timing: It's going to sound pretty rote to American audiences who've been steeped in this stuff for the past couple years, and while it's doubtful that the Rakes are overtly ripping off any of the bands they resemble, it scans as a failure of imagination on the listener's end.

Art Brut's mundane, declarative statements are funny as hell, balanced perfectly on the sincerity/irony axis, and Skinner's are richly detailed. The Rakes aren't as witty as Art Brut, and they lack Skinner's close scrutiny, but their lyrical slant-- revolving around the working trendy person's guilt and ennui-- is not without interest. "Retreat" sets the tone for the album by swinging wildly between earnestness and apathy. "Everything is temporary these days," Alan Donohoe laments. But in a record that's all about jaded acquiesce, he immediately gives up: "Might as well go out for the third night in a row." After wondering whether he should donate his money to a charity or go on holiday, Donohoe succumbs to malaise: "Walk home, come down, retreat to sleep/ Wake up, go out again, repeat." The working man's blues even creep into the paranoid "Terror!": "And my job in the city won't matter no more/ When the network is down and my flesh is all torn." While a portrait of a generation's concerns, however superficial, does emerge, the triteness of these concerns and the clichés Donohoe often uses to limn them fall short of endearing. "I had just woke up in someone else's bed/ She was overweight/ Who did I do last night?" he charmingly wonders on "The Guilt".

But if you find the lyrics resonant (maybe it helps to be a young working Brit with a "22 Grand Job") and you aren't sick of jittery eight-notes yet, Capture/Release is a well-mounted entry. "Strasbourg" introduces a searing two-tone lead, a fluid rhythmic drive, and Donohoe's winning sneer in perfect pop succession, while "Retreat" fulfills the off-kilter Talking Heads impulse with chomping guitars and muted harmonics. "Open Book" is a staccato shuffle with verse-busting "oh-ohs" and a suavely sexy vocal line; "Binary Love" gleams with squiggly guitars and hooky, romantic verses; the slight reverb and sparse, hollow percussion of "Violet" fit in the mandatory "sorta reggae" slot just fine. But by the time "Work Work Work (Pub, Club, Sleep)" rolls around, the message-- crass materialism breed existential angst-- starts to weigh down the medium, and one longs for a lighter touch.