The Sunshine Underground - Nobody's Coming To Save You

Despite their protests, The Sunshine Underground’s debut Raise The Alarm was pitched somewhere between Franz Ferdinand and The Rapture. In short, bass-heavy, funky, indie pop that kept a close eye on dance-floor aesthetics. Follow-up Nobody’s Coming To Save You offers a more polished attempt to infiltrate bigger platforms and it’s mainly to the Leeds lads' credit. The strong opening half is a concise statement of stadium-friendly disco anthems, with highlight Spell It Out suggesting a pre-parody Killers-cum-Kasabian shaped hole being filled. From there though, things turn patchier. Change Your Mind is bland indie pop with soaring production as a disguise whilst finale The Messiah is ham-fisted in its attempt at emotional, rousing rock, complete with predictable chord progressions and risible vocals. Had The Sunshine Underground stuck rigidly to their palette, we may admittedly have been calling them on that, but there’s a feeling it would have produced a better result. [Darren Carle]