Layabouts - Y

  by John Clarkson

published: 31 / 3 / 2008

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Review

Layabouts are a young five-piece band from Madrid. They are open about what they like, and including Joy Division, the Cure and Franz Ferdinand amongst their influences and above all American garage bands of the 70’s, sing in English and play gusty rock ‘n’ roll with a heart. Their eponymous debut album gets off to a slightly limp start with ‘Stop the Replay’, which suffers from a somewhat muddied production. The other ten remaining tracks are, however, much crisper in sound, and ‘Layabouts’, with its tales of heartbreak and boredom, soon picks up in both pace and volume. ‘Despite the Neons’ and ‘Care’, two of the middle tracks, push Marti Perarnau’s shimmering keyboards to the fore to fine effect. The album is also brought to a superb, suitably stormy close with ‘Perfect Day’, and the breathless, yelping vocals of singer and bassist Jan Arias and the stop-start duelling guitars of Javier Castellano and Robert Sudrez. It could be argued that Layabouts aren’t doing anything that hasn’t been done a million times before and are a little too in awe of their musical heroes of the Stooges and the New York Dolls. This is music, however, which comes straight from the gut and soul, and that never pretends to be anything which it is not. In Arlas Layabouts have an especially acrobatic-throated frontman. The four musicians who back him, who also include drummer Victor Alvarez, are also taut and focused in their playing, and are never less than energetic or enthusiastic. One is left with the impression from listening to ‘Layabouts’ that its musicians are in music for all the right reasons and, far from worrying about how big they can make their bank balance, are there to see simply how much fun they can bring out of it to themselves and to their audience. This is both an admirable and very enjoyable debut album.

Track Listing:-

1 Stop The Replay
2 Rat In A Lab
3 Fine For Me
4 Got You
5 Despite The Neons
6 Care
7 Electro Rocker Move
8 Naive
9 Cut My Strings
10 In The Sunshine
11 Perfect Day

Band Links:-

http://www.layaboutsband.com/
https://www.facebook.com/layabouts
https://twitter.com/Layaboutsband
https://www.youtube.com/user/Layabouts
https://plus.google.com/11737998496313