Kubichek! - Not Enough Night

Remember when your mates had a band that you thought were the best thing ever? When you all looked forward to what was the next Scout hut gig? And when UK Rock was still a ‘genre’? Yes? In reality all that ‘raw edge’ was just being a bit rubbish, sorry about that.

However, Kubichek! are your mates’ band gone right. Very right.

With impassioned vocals rather than a too-cool-for-school droll, ‘Not Enough Night’ is stuttery yet brash alt-punk-pop that deserves both an intense listen and a good dance. ‘Just Shut It Down’ and ‘Taxi’ are perfect examples of this. With its in-yer-face backing and perfectly timed layering, it has pop catchiness coupled with a ferociousness that’s lacking in the charts. Think This Ain’t Vegas with a muzzle on. Or the sublime Field Music given a kick up the bum by something a bit spiky.

‘Nightjoy’’s repetition of the album title doesn’t just have fantastic singalong potential. It’s also an intriguing musical maze. Yep, the hooks are so tight and rhythms carefully selected that it could be one of those new fancy Bloc Party songs. If Bloc Party were having a bit of a lazy day, that is. Because there’s nothing pretentious about Kubichek!. Unless you count the confusing ‘Start As We Mean To’. It seems they mean to sound like Explosions In The Sky there. An interesting experiment, but not what these boys do best.

That’s saved for previous single ‘Opening Slot’. In under three minutes, the four-piece create a track that’s got a noisy opening, an exciting rumbling anticipatory bridge and the word ‘film’ said in a frankly quite bizarre - yet ace - way.

However, even these tricksters could do with pulling up their rock star socks at points. ‘Hope Is Impossible’ is a bit Idlewild ‘dad rock’ rather than anything on the closely titled rockfest ‘Hope Is Important’. Luckily things rapidly pick up. ‘Stutter’ does what it says in the title, where enunciated vocals and a rapidly building backing builds and falters in another pacey tale of local towns.

But just think, the meeting point between your mates’ sixth form punk band, proper pop, and a lashing of Explosions In The Sky? Surely there’s a scene in the making…