It's ironic that on the day your reviewer's been tackling Geezers Of Nazareth's creative pilfering that he should also be confronted by London quartet THE BOYFRIENDS, who are also good at this artistic tea-leafery, it seems.
Because, as soon as your reviewer slipped "No Tomorrow" onto the CD player he got a shock and a half. Consult the sleeve again - is this really a fresh-faced London quartet and NOT a lost Joy Division track? Those drums! They ARE "Transmission"! That bassline - they've hijacked Peter Hook! That guitar - it IS Bernard Sumner! Those deep, sonorous vocals, it can't be...
Alright, so you get the picture. But once you get over the shock, The Boyfriends' own oeuvre does slowly start to bully its' way into the picture. Yes, "No Tomorrow" is heavily influenced by Joy Division, but singer Martin Wallace is a good lyricist in his own right, possesses charisma aplenty and with the gear change at the chorus and that none-more fatalistic "live like there's no tomorrow, this very day could your last" chorus, they make this moody, indie guitar band business sound like it still has legs. Which, if you gaze into the right corners, it does of course.
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Besides, the JD comparisons are righteously kicked into touch with second tune "I Love You", where a thundercloud-sized squall of feedback deafens your sensibilities before levering up a molten torrent of a song driven along by overheating fretwork and a massively in-your-face rhythm section. Wallace is also on form again, as he sings "For as long as you'll have me, I love you" with darkness and opportunism's strings attached. The effect is brain-scouringly impressive and with this sonic/volcanic eruption in mind, it's no surprise that the Jesus & Mary Chain's Jim Reid was heard to mutter "quite good" on catching a recent Boyfriends' show at London's Bull & Gate.
It's too early to make rash predictions of The Boyfriends' staying power as suitors at this stage, but if they can slide out of Joy Division's not insubstantial shadow for long enough, they'll be an attractive dating proposition at the very least.
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