Working For A Nuclear Free City - Working For A Nuclear Free City
Release type, label: album, Melodic
Release date: Aug 21 2006
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With positive reviews from the regional press, Nuclear Free are rising stars in the Manchester Scene. They have an amusing name and their minimal cover art looks so trendy that it might do well at the Tate gift shop. They can play, and the range of subgenres their work embraces will be familiar to many. So why not make this the next CD you buy? Precisely because it is so familiar.

It covers the same ground already driven into itself by Kasabian and the various 90's indie bands that inspired that group. The vocals’ laid back, heavily accented style often reminds you of Ian Brown, complemented by more bass and percussion heavy dance numbers that indie bands of the ilk of Mansun, Space and even the Stone Roses used to break up what would otherwise have been overly poppy albums. We've heard this all before, and although it's not an embarassment by any means, it's a case of once more without feeling.

I can see this record used in the background at clubs to provide a general mood, but at home without pints to protect it, this album does not reward more attentive listening. Having said this, the songs ‘Innocence’ and ‘Over’, in which the music is allowed to develop, rather than remaining stuck in the repetitive pastiche of most of the others (‘Tape’ being a particularly dull case in point), are solid songs. So the band is not without promise of producing something more genuinely expressive in the future.