Album: The Strange Death Of Liberal England - Forward March! (Fantastic Plastic)

Yet another new British band taking more cues from across the water than close to home, The Strange Death Of Liberal England take the post-rock inflections of Godspeed! You Black Emperor and the communal, hymnal catharsis of The Arcade Fire and turn it into something that never really feels like it's their own.

Now, we all know that there aren't really any original ideas left in music, doubly so in the indie-rock sphere, so the least you can do is be wilfully idiosyncratic and hope that people dig your angle. TSDOLE borrow so much that they often struggle to make their own mark. If it wasn't enough that the song-titles are so overly precious as to be off-putting ('Summer Gave Us Sweets But Autumn Wrought Division'? Please.), most of the music within rehashes ideas that others have already had and realised more fully.

But – and it's a moderately-sized but – when TSDOLE are good, they're pretty great. In 'I Saw Evil', the whole band pull together and fall apart in a violent mess of feedback and cavernous drumming. Also, the baroque pomposity of 'An Old Fashioned War' suits them well, like Gogol Bordello recording for Constellation. When The Strange Death Of Liberal England are firing on all cylinders, their derivativeness is easier to swallow, but elsewhere on Forward March! the lack of a distinguishing voice fails to paper over the cracks. A little nurturing and allowed more time to find their feet though and they could surprise us all.

http://www.highvoltage.org.uk/displaydemoreview.asp?num=2892&band=1622