This eponymous début album from Watford’s Funeral Shakes (Silent Cult) is the sort of record that could be part of rebuilding your faith that your favourite rock’n’roll band can still be the last gang in town. Comprising members and former members of Nervus, the sadly departed The Smoking Hearts and Gallows, the band’s underground credentials are pretty impeccable. This collection of twelve songs (well, eleven songs and an instrumental number) is a pared back, attitude-heavy collection of swagger-laden tunes revealing a (not unexpected) love of UK Punk, hardcore, and melody.

The tone for the album is set from the get-go; ‘Over You’ is all infectious melody, sneering vocal and no-nonsense delivery. Indeed, the entire record, whilst wearing its influences and heritage on its sleeves as proudly as a freshly inked tattoo, has an immediacy and familiarity of a record that you have lived with for an age rather than one that you’re just getting used to.

There is an ease with which Funeral Shakes throw out big choruses that suggests a band completely in control of their art and craft; much of this is undoubtedly down to the band’s previous collective experience prior to this Funeral Shakes project (many of you will be familiar with Lee Barrett’s drumming in Gallows, for example) but it’s the sense of collective endeavour and collective joy that makes listening to this début effort so painless and joyful.

If this is your sort of thing – and, if you’re reading this review then I suspect it is – you will find yourself singing along with the harmonies on ‘Lightning’ within the first couple of listens; air-drumming the hell out of ‘Lovebirds’ and making plans for your strategic entry into the circle pits that will doubtless be generated when they play ‘Circles’ live.

 

Funeral Shakes succeeds on its own terms: it’s the sort of record that would make you sound very cool and knowing on Twitter and move your cred points up several notches. Funeral Shakes are a band of promise: they look great (I really want one of their shirts) and they sound even better on this, a début record that fizzes and hums with sparkle, wit, and bonhomie. It’s not a stonewall classic but for all of its forty or so minutes, you’ll find yourself having a very lovely time. Job done, then.

7.5/10

MAT DAVIES