Product Description

'Superabundance' is the second full-length album and follow-up to 2006's 'Voices Of Animals And Men' from the Young Knives. A keen sense of wit is blended here with alarmingly accurate social commentary, earning the band comparison with artists as diverse as Syd Barrett and The Streets. The music shifts between sharp post-punk and 1990's Brit Pop while the singles 'Terra Firma' and 'Up All Night' are included.

Track Listing

1. Fit 4 U
2. Terra Firma
3. Up All Night
4. Counters
5. Light Switch
6. Turn Tail
7. I Can Hardly See Them
8. Dyed In The Wool
9. Rue The Days
10. Flies
11. Mummy Light The Fire
12. Current Of The River

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1406 in Music
• Released on: 2008-03-10
• Number of discs: 1

Amazon.co.uk Reviews
Ashby-de-la-Zouche's favourite sons return with a second album of angular punk-pop songs, lyrical eccentricity, and wry observations that curl an eyebrow at English society like schoolboys gazing at ants through a magnifying glass. Whereas the Young Knives' debut album Voices of Animals and Men felt like a clever spin on the skinny guitars and lurching bass of the post-punk revival bands, Superabundance feels like a bigger, deeper record, one which finds the Young Knives adding layers of guitars, parping trumpets, and orchestral trimmings to the brew. There are further changes to the formula, too: while earlier Young Knives material felt witty and versed in the language of farce, Superabundance is a rather more melancholy, pensive affair, full of quiet disgust. "Up All Night" takes a determined sober look at late-night hedonism: "Everybody looks famous/They've been wasting lots of time/And everybody looks special/In their mind's eye". In the following "Counters", someone gasses themselves in the front seat of their car. Luckily, the Young Knives are compelling enough characters that they can carry off occasional sour vibes without coming on as crotchety old men: take "Dyed in the Wool", a heart-on-sleeve plea for simplicity that rhymes "headlock" with "wedlock" as a means of sneaking into your affections. It works, too. --Louis Pattison

About the Artist
A muscular clatter of pulsing guitars, head-spinning percussive thuds and harmonic, brotherly vocals provide the backbone to a rich throng of giddy, excited ideas and ageless, wry lyrical themes. Truly, Young Knives are a band for our times, and all times.

It's been quite a spell for this most resplendent, distinctive of respectably dressed men. Based upon an inimitably tight, irreplaceable unit, comprising brothers Henry and Thomas `House Of Lords' Dartnall and original school-friend Oliver Askew, who all met in Ashby De La Zouche near Loughborough, it was years of rubbish music-making and ironic cover versions before anything particularly viable was to form. Then university got in the way altogether, rendering the band temporarily redundant.

Eventually, the rolling Welsh hills that surrounded their stint at Uni led to a cultural and physical shift - to Oxford. It was here that it started making sense to take things a little more seriously. Exploiting the town's rich musical heritage and set of venues and arch promoter types, the trio began a vigorous assault course of excessive gigging and recording. Early results include their first, mini opus - the jagged and unrelenting, Brit-Pixies jar of `The Young Knives... Are Dead'. It was an early nod to the band's penchant and celebration for home-grown eccentricity and close-to-home irreverence, surreal and infectious in equal doses.

An unofficially released EP - `Rollerskater' - and several hundred, band-pressed `Nolen's Volens' LPs surfaced afterwards, but it was with the arrival of some thunderous, brand-new material in winter 2005 that audiences began taking particular note. It all suddenly clicked. The abrasive guitars and stop-start rhythmic somersaults were merging with new melody-drenched choruses that stuck in heads and shifted feet. What's more, Andy Gill of the legendary Gang Of Four started phoning them up to hastily organise some recording sessions in his home-studio.

The newly formed, London-based Transgressive Records, barely three seven-inch vinyl releases in, heard about this regional outbreak - and hopped on a train from Paddington to Oxfordshire to witness what was happening. Greeting them onstage at homely local venue The Wheatsheaf that night were three tweed-clad, English professor-likes performing some of the most visceral and feral pop songs of a generation. Barely a month later, signatures were stolen, dreams were made, and a classic album was embarked upon, utilising Gill at the helm.

Customer Reviews

Check the cover
A big let down after Voices of Animals and Men. What happened to all the humour and weirdness? The album cover really sums up the music.

Flies....All over my body
This is a totally underrated album by the magnificent Young Knives. Its classic edgy indie rock. The first half of the album is similar to stuff found on the excellent 'Voices of Animals and Men', with a polished feel. The album gets more interesting from Turn Tail onwards. Mummy Light the Fire, with its magnificent psychedelic feel, Flies and Current of the River totally change the feel and tempo of the album, hoisting it to 'classic' in my book. There is something slightly sinister about the Knives, especially when the House of Lords is singing, which I like, in particular and this feeling certainly increases towards the end of the album, when the music and lyrical delivery matches the darkness of the lyrics.

The Knives are also big on ironic social commentary- listen to Fit 4 U and Up All Night, especially. The lyrics are disturbing, gloomy, and totally juxtaposed with the abundently rich, hummable and melodic music. Counters is the antithesis of pop lyrically- "Sitting in the front seat/Turning on the motor/Sucking on a hosepipe"- is the chorus, but musically would sit happily on Radio One or the 'Charts'. The ultimate irony, of course, is that a band this articulate and imaginative do not grace the upper echelons of the 'charts' or mainstream music. But, I suppose, thats the point'.

A band further developing it's own particular line of strangness...
The Young Knives, on their second album "Voices of Animals and Men", were the slightly barmy, quirky band produced by Andy "Gang of Four" Gill, who mostly "angular" in riff but lyrically not quite ready to take themselves, or life in general, that seriously.

Sombre follow-ups to excited albums aren't uncommon (see The Futureheads) but the lyrical themes on "Superabundence" are noticeably much grimmer than on their last album. Death, suicide, fatigue with modern living and the futility of youth are all crammed in to just the first few songs, albeit rather comically against a backdrop of trebly guitars and an excited rhythm section.

Without that quite-so-obvious feeling of jubilation there is the sense that the record isn't quite as immediate as its predecssor; and the significant presense of strings does take a bit of getting use to, but it hints at a depth not previously something the band were concerned too much about exploring. It's also a record where the shouty-anthemic "Terra Firma" can be bookended by the, frankly, rather weird "Mummy Light The Fire" and "Flies".

It all hints at a band aiming for a little more maturity, and achieving it without becoming boring, and nudging towards new experiments in their sound without forgetting what people liked about them so much in the first place. It's probably an album existing fans will absolutely love - but I'm not quite convinced that with its consciously more downbeat lyrics it'll necessarily attract as many new ones as it deserves to.