Lucksmiths - Up With the Sun

  by Rachel Williams

published: 25 / 11 / 2008

Label: Fortuna POP!
Format: CDS

intro

Finely executed, but totally predictable indie pop on new double A-sided download single from the Lucksmiths

I must admit I was fairly excited when I heard that I was to be reviewing the newly released Lucksmiths' double A-side; ‘Up With The Sun’/‘A Sobering Thought (Just When One Was Needed)’, the first release of what it is to be their 11th album and their first in 3 years. Although not a die hard fan, I had listened to a number of tracks by the band before (most being from ‘Naturaliste’; my favourite there being 'Camera Shy'- an exceptionally pretty song which fills your heart with butterflies) and I, therefore, looked forward to hearing it, hoping that it would be an indie-centric jangle-pop record that would have me feeling a similar way. And indeed, as expected it did not disappoint in that respect. It was, as expected, a perfected piece of pop. ‘Up With The Sun’ offered a an pretty-as-pie song about the way someone can make you life change, revitalize you, re-energise you; the chorus remembering "a time when every lunch was breakfast" accompanied by fuzzy jangly guitars fitted in precisely to give it that pop-sound that I had pre-empted. Slightly more interestingly its accompanying track, ‘A Sobering Thought (Just When One Was Needed)’, is a tale of adolescence and practical jokes at the swimming pool with an edge of the bittersweet tone of wasted youth. Both were well designed pop songs that ticked all the boxes but somehow I was left feeling a little hungry and unsatisfied. Perhaps the expectation and the perfection ruined it for me; I couldn’t get over the fact that this was exactly what I had expected; yes the lyrics were clever and well written, yes the songs covered the indie pop bases but there was something that left me a little cold, a little unenthused by it all; the sweetness of ‘Up With The Sun’ left me feeling a little sickly - its lyrics had an edge of pretension but did not fulfill. I preferred the second – its subject made me smile but it still did not grab me in the way that other Lucksmiths songs have. Maybe I was having an off-day or perhaps I was in a punk rather than pop mood when I listened. Who knows! But I could not help feeling a little disappointed by being greeted by exactly what I had expected. All in all this was a well crafted sample of what – no doubt- their new album is to be like when it is released in December and I’m sure there will be many that listen to it and think it a tasty tune but for me it only just reached the mediocre.

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