It reads like something from a punk rock fairytale.
A relatively unknown band from the West Midlands tour relentlessly around the UK’s toilet circuit with little acclaim. Doing what most others don’t, Beat Union send demos to music industry A&R representatives worldwide, managing to grab the attention of Goldfinger frontman and leading A&R man at Warner, John Feldmann. Impressing Feldmann as no other band seems to have done in a long time, he flies the foursome to L.A., at his own expense no less, to record three tracks and eventually their debut album, ‘Disconnected’. So what does the product of four Brummies and one of the music industry’s biggest names sound like?
Quite frankly, it’s frigging awesome. Kicking off the festivities is the title track, which lyrically pokes fun at the Myspace generation, while offering a musical throwback to the new wave punk bands of the late seventies. It’s snappy, it’s catchy, and it grabs your attention from the offset.
Elsewhere, Feldmann has breathed a new lease of life into ‘She is the Gun’, ‘Can’t Stop the Radio’ and ‘Johnny loves JoJo’, which all sound more polished and energetic than the versions that have been floating about the interweb for a while now. Aside from them, there are some absolute pop-tastic gems hidden within Disconnected’s 12 tracks. ‘My Heart Starts Beating’ is achingly beautiful, with a chorus as infectious as it is lyrically repetitive, and leading single ‘Calling’ is likely to become a true summer party anthem.
It’s not often that I say this, but there isn’t a single bad track on this album. There’s the odd questionable lyric here and there, but overall it’s a fantastic effort from a band at the forefront of the UK’s pop-punk scene. While Warsop may not be the musical second coming that John Feldmann prophesised in our interview with him earlier this month, Beat Union as a whole have one hell of a good idea how to write a tune (or twelve). Big things are already happening for Beat Union, and with the release of this cracking debut full-length, they’re only going to get bigger.
Andy R
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