aaamusic | On 18, Feb 2013

There are many types of bands that really don’t help journalists when they come across them. City Reign are one of the alpha types of those bands, which is the one where you subjectively know that they could be doing what they do markedly better, but the songs are too awesome to care. City Reign are a heart band for me, it’s totally subjective, there’s no real reason to like them as much as I do but that’s the nature with so many of everyone’s favourite bands. It must be something to do with the mix of warm American Indie rock and the best kinds of Britpop… but then again that’s such a vague proposition that there are bound to be similar kinds of bands who are god-awful as well. Back to the drawing board I guess. Maybe it’s the fact that they sound an awful lot like The Smiths but without a certain lead singer of theirs ruining everything spectacularly for me? Again, there are bands that do that particular thing better than this Manchester based quartet…. Hmm. I guess sometimes, dear reader, I’m going to have to be deeply unhelpful and say that these guys are awesome because they have an undefinable “thing” that makes me swoon over them. Curses.

So, City Reign then. Manchester based four-piece specialising in enormous sounding indie rock. I’ve come across more than a few of these in my time and this is the first time I’ve been even half way interested, let alone thoroughly enjoying it. Now I mention it though, these guys don’t seem to be convinced of their own greatness. There’s something refreshingly self-assured in Another Step, their debut album, they don’t have to shout about how great they are, they know it, and it doesn’t power their songs which sets them apart from the likes of The Courteeners and their ilk. It’s a record powerful in its understatement, not afraid to put a string-swept acoustic lament (the heart-rending Retaliate) on the same record as thunderous, Springsteen-esque workouts like Daybreak, but confident enough in the act not to write songs about how fearless they are. This is of course secondary to the songs, which are pretty much uniformly wonderful, full of craft, meaning and identity. But as much as I hate to think it, that’s subjective. Someone could quite easily hate them. They’d have no soul to speak of but that’s the nature of opinion eh?

In total, I kind of love this album. The perfect meeting of the dreaminess of 80’s indie rock and modern day indie rock’s bullish self-belief, and that, my friends is what this album objectively has over most. I adore the songs on it for every reason you can love a song, they’re melodic, interesting, exciting… all that good stuff, but as much as I hate to admit it, that’s never enough to make a truly great band, especially when it comes to genres like Indie Rock which have been explored within an inch of their lives recently. But take a listen to this stunner of an album and even if what you don’t see what I think I’ve seen in them, if you’re anything like me you’ll stay for the songs. And when it comes down to it, that’s all that matters.

★★★★★

Will Howard