Albums of the Year # 17 Drug Store Romeos - The world within our bedrooms

 

One of my favourite new young British bands of recent years and a great debut album.

 

An album I've been waiting for with some anticipation for a while and it hasn't disappointed. Home Counties bedroom dreamers Drug Store Romeos come up with a debut that underlines the value and potential harvest that can be reaped from pursuing your own vision on The World Within Our Bedrooms.

While hip urban types groove it up at The Brixton Windmill raving over The Fall, The Gang of Four, Can and Free Jazz, Drug Store Romeos take a vastly contrasting trip grounded in casio tone runs of the most basic kinds and honeyed vocals. It's a wonderfully basic recipe that becomes more fruitful and revalatory as the record progresses. By the end of the record a hynotic spell has been cast not a million miles away from that of the first two Suicide albums.

Drug Store Romeos' intentions are not unnaturally a lot gentler than Suicide's however. The World Within Our Bedrooms evokes England's Dreaming as powerfully as any record in recent memory. Listening to it you can almost conjur up a vision of the placid streets of Fleet the three grew up in and longed to escape from. This record is a testimonial to the power of the imagination.

Influences are definitely apparent. It's difficult to imagine the record without Stereolab or Broadcast and the whole album is underpinned by a bassline pulse that is consistently reminiscent of New Order, while Sarah Downie's opiate heavy vocals reminded me of Dubstar. Young Marble Giants classic Colossal Youth might also be some kind of touchstone for this inpsired budgeted minimalism. There are also inevitable, implicit nods to the big daddies of this kind of electronic contemplation, Kraftwerk, Neu and Human League.

But Drug Store Romeos own input is so considered and considerable that their points of inspiration become increasingly irrelevant. The World Within Our Bedrooms  makes a great case for itself as the British debut album of the year, even as early as July. It's a truly wonderful record, something of an instant classic and I look forward greatly to getting to know it properly.