At the start of the year I was excited at the brand new album by Grabbel and the Final Cut. I announced the release back in January, which was a bold move by the band committing to a new single every month. Now in late December we are 11 songs into the album, only through misfortune they missed a month.
Back at the beginning of the year, I drew comparisons to this and when in 1992 The Wedding Present decided to release a limited edition single every month. The singles later became the album Hit Parade. Like The Wedding Present, Grabbel and the Final Cut are a singles band and each single stands on its own, but this in turn creates a classic album. It is vastly different to the music that they made two decades ago (eventhough I suspect some of the song were conceived 20 years ago).
In the track Dark Side Stefan’s vocal soliloquy sounds style sounds very similar to Guy Chadwick in Spy in the House of Love era. Passions Just Like Mine starts off with some dialogue from the 2008 film RocknRolla, and rolls into a song about a lovestruck car journey, it’s a real grower. The next song In Between Years has an almost angular guitar riff at the start, this is the most post-punk sounding Grabbel and the Final Cut song. The spiky guitar is lost in the latter part of the as the guitars become more fluid, but there is a great guitar solo towards the end. My favourite is The Pioneer, a really catchy fast rhythm section, with slower thoughtful lyrics. But there is still one more song to be released to complete the album, and this could possibly take the top spot.
I was a Teenage Shoegazer 