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The Rakes
Capture/Release
V2
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Article
written by Hattie N
Aug 18, 2005.
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“This is a true story” mumbles The Rakes’ Alan Donohoe at the start of “The Guilt”. And here, he perfectly sums up the root of his band’s appeal. Excluding the exhilaratingly spikey opener “Strasbourg” (though surely all of us have had our spy-based escapades in Cold War-era West Germany in our time) this album is a true story. Not in a self-pitying, confessional kind of way, but because The Rakes subject matter is largely rooted in “real life” (whatever that is). Therefore, “Capture/Release” provides a fitting soundtrack to it.
Take the brilliance of former singles “Retreat” and “22 Grand Job” for instance; both chronicling the repetitive dullness of life, and both designed to be slurred along to by drunken ravers at an indie-disco on a Friday night. The more candid and almost soulful “Open Book”, meanwhile, is a relationship-based song which doesn’t descend into being slushy or tortured, and in the thrashing electro-punk of “T-Bone”, the band have created surely the finest ode to beef, ever. It’s not faultless by any means, at times a little more melody here and there could improve matters, but then The Rakes have an ability to create mini-pop classics without it; “We Are All Animals” is simple yet sparkling. And though Donohoe’s voice is unexceptional, here lies its charm; by sounding like a bloke down the pub singing kareoke when he’s drunk, he adds yet more accessibility to his music.
In many ways this album is very straightforward and basic. But it will outlast its numerous Art-rock eighties-throwback contemporaries because it is important. By chronicling their lives and the lives of so many others, The Rakes have compiled a reflection of society. The goddam foot-tappingness of all eleven songs here means that “Capture/Release” is, weirdly, ideal escapism too; it’s made to be danced to. This is an album without pretension or ideas above its station; it is a blunt but sincere collection of uncomplicated pop songs. And what makes them all the more alluring, is that they tell the truth.
Untitled Document
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