YOUNG KNIVES INTERVIEW
After the band’s recent Mercury music prize nomination for their 2006 debut album, Voices of Animals & Men, Young Knives return with follow up Superabundance, all new for 2008.
Proving their adaptability and freshness, whilst still maintaining the aspects of their personality loved by all, Young Knives are set to cement their position as the greatest British pop band of our generation. A refinement of the lyrical style showcased on tracks like ‘Loughborough Suicide’ from the first album permeates their new material - but this time their fine eye for astute and cynical observations is countered by a new found mastery of pop sensibilities and soaring melodies, aligning the band with such British greats of the last 20 years as Blur, Pulp and Radiohead.
Superabundance is a vast progression from their previous work - produced by Tony Doogan (Super Furry Animals, Mogwai, Belle & Sebastian, Dirty Pretty Things) in Glasgow last summer - this body of work is (gasp) poppier and more expansive, but at the same time remaining utterly idiosyncratic and true to the band’s leftfield and entirely British roots, making for a genuinely compelling and tantalising listen.
The club-storming, first single ‘Terra Firma’ (released October ’07, Radio 1 B-list & MTV2 A-list) is arguably the song most reminiscent of those on the last album. However from thereon in Superabundance maps a vast area of musical landscapes: there is a beautiful mix of huge, lighters-aloft tracks including future single Turn Tail which sees vast sweeping string arrangements compete for size with the band’s most anthemic chorus to date.
Turn Tail sits seamlessly alongside eccentric, leftfield pop gems (Counters, Fit 4 U) and naturally, a handful of highly original Young Knives oddities (I Can Hardly See Them, Mummy Light the Fire, and House of Lords’ tear-jerking, solo moment, Flies). Sixteen-piece orchestras, pianos, brass and electronics nestle for the first time amongst the band’s trademark, palpably tight, three-piece sound, creating a whole new dimension for the Knives.FEATURED ARTIST
The Temptations
Thanks to their fine-tuned choreography — and even finer harmonies — the Temptations became the definitive male vocal group of the 1960s; one of Motown's most elastic acts, they tackled both lush pop and politically charged funk with equal flair, and weathered a steady stream of changes in personnel and consumer tastes with rare dignity and grace.