Over the last couple of months, I’ve heard people raving about The Subways. Young for Eternity seems to have gained some pretty decent reviews, (“the sexiest thing to sweep rock ‘n’ roll of its feet in years”, say the NME) and a few folk I know have been telling me that London-based popular beat combo are going to be something of a big… em… thing.

I listened to the record a while back, and filed it under “forgettable”, but, knowing that I’m a flawed genius (though a genius nonetheless), when I recently had someone telling me that they were mind-blowing, I figured that maybe I’d got them all wrong. So, I duly and dutifully listened to the record again.

Now I love the title – Young for Eternity is the kind of zingy, I’m-going-to-live-forever-but-not-in-a-lame-ass-Fame-kind-of-a-way thing that I think that all great bands should aspire to. Bands who release self-titled drudgery, take note. So I figured, with that as a beginning, I must have been wrong. Did I first listen to it hungover? It’s quite a possibility.

The record opens quite decently with “I want to hear what you have to say”, and carries on with the better-than-average “Holiday”, which has some lovely backing and harmonies by female Subway Charlotte, who appears on a few songs and who livens up a number of the tracks.

Things started to go downhill from “Rock & Roll Queen”, and don’t quite recover. Basically, listening to lead vocalist Billy Lunn’s snarl, you can’t help but notice the resemblance to a certain Mr. L. Gallagher. Indeed, from their website: “it wasn’t until seeing Oasis perform “Supersonic” on Top of the Pops that Lunn first strapped on the six-string. Profoundly inspired, he took his dad’s battered old acoustic out of the attic and…”. Wearing your influences on your sleeve is one thing, but making a formal evening suit out of them is another.

And this is my problem with The Subways: for all of their energy, zest, vim and vigour, they still sound just like a band I really liked 10 years ago but who haven’t sounded as good since then. If I want to listen to a sub-Oasis, I’ll listen to… well, Oasis.

It’s a pity, because I think that if frontman Lunn moved over and let Charlotte take the vocal reign, they’d have something interesting going on, as on those all-too brief moments on “Oh Yeah”. Until then, The Subways are going to be digging themselves a deeper and deeper hole to sing out of…

The Subways – Rock & Roll Queen (rapidshare / megaupload)
The Subways – Oh Yeah (rapidshare / megaupload)