This review was origonally supposed to be centred on Madding Crowd's free download of
Celebration, a track from this album but due to my offline status for a couple of weeks I thought, fuck it, just do the record.
The Madding Crowd could be popped in with brash wiry indie bands like Milbun but The Madding Crowd have more on offer than the usual jack the lad bilge. They do have a pretty distinctive singer who vocalises in the current trend of brash Englishmen larking about but the music touches enough bases to make the material a cut above.
A lot of the songs bounce with pep, like mid period Blur stripped of the cockiness, tunes such as
Modern Man and the rapid
Take A Walk all share the same kind of vigour as
Chemical World for instance.
The said download
Celebration is a great little number, fusing angry electric Kinks with the mad sax of RFTC in a rocking yet refined manner.
Refined is also the lovely
Simple which closes the record, a rather plain and sedate acoustic number which complements their more rockist material elsewhere.
Hardly revolutionary but this album has summat going for it in its solid craftmanship.
Out March the 17th.
Celebration can be downloaded here:
http://www.maddingcrowd.info/downloads
