Ever since Failsafe/Duckhunt sent me some rough demos about two years ago, I’ve loved this band. They’re one of only a few that I’d have loved to have worked with on Punktastic Recordings that we were ‘beaten’ to – so it was a personal triumph to have them on board for Un-Scene 2. If you liked ‘Unity In Progress’ from that record, then you will absolutely adore ‘What We Are Today’ – a record that will be looked back in years to come and spoken about in the same breath as seminal CDs from British alumni like Capdown and Captain Everything. This is a special CD from a special band – arguably one that now has the future at their feet.
What makes ‘What We Are Today’ so damn good is its diversity. There are so many styles and so many sounds that each listen leaves you with something new to grab hold of. From the aggressive ‘Actions For Answers’ to the dub-tinged ‘Das Regg’, Failsafe have managed to carve out a sound that will see them fairly dubbed as the UK’s answer to the Rx Bandits. The musicianship is of an extraordinarily high quality and literally every single song is a winner. And that’s saying something because this album is 14 songs and not far shy of an hour long, yet there’s not one point where I feel the need to hit the skip button.
There are so many standouts it would take a long time to go through them all track by track. The opening triple salvo of ‘Actions For Answers’, ‘Unity In Progress’ and ‘Fire At Will’ literally dumps on most albums ever, while ‘To Deny Yourself’ and ‘Das Regg’ will make you pull on your dancing pants and make you think you look good on the dancefloor. But then that’s the genius of this record – it holds a little bit of everything. While ‘To Deny Yourself’ has small ska-ish elements, tracks like ‘Rule Of Thumb’ just have an astonishing ability to make you sing along, dance or simply tap your feet.
While the band are adept at the slower and more subtle songs, for me they are at their best when they push the pedal to the metal. ‘Time Moves Closer’ is a future classic, ‘You’re Free To Think What We Tell You’ sounds like a cross between Howards Alias and NoComply and ‘All You’ll Ever Be’ makes great use of some keys/synth without sounding in the slightest bit cheesy. As creative and inventive a release from a UK band in donkeys years, hopefully in a year or two people will be using words like ‘seminal’ when they talk about this album. ‘What We Are Today’ is a must buy – so what are you waiting for?
www.failsafeuk.com
Deck Cheese
Paul