Red Threat - Your Call is Important to Us

Do you disagree with JA and DC's assessment? No problem - send us your own review and redress the balance...

[Many thanks to MS for doing just that! See below. (Ed.)]

In an age where DIY music making is the current trend, an album that has been written, recorded and distributed from a suburban attic is an exciting prospect. Your Call Is Important To Us ticks all these boxes being the brainchild of songwriter Rob Willis and guitarist/producer Simon Warby. Incorporating the influences of 80s post-punk, early 90s dance and the faded glory of glam rock, this nine track LP sounds like a cross between the mad indie of Super Furry Animals and the Manchester electronica of New Order. Such a mix of styles could be interesting, but unfortunately Red Threat fail to convincingly produce a coherent sound from their many aspirations.

The first impression of the album is one of poor production. The fizzy guitars and muffled vocals along with the sterile, programmed drums make it painfully obvious that this is a home recording. Couple this with puerile lyrics, including songs about salesmen and healthy eating, and 'Your Call is Important To Us' goes from promising to a genuinely baffling experience. It's hard to understand exactly what Red Threat were trying to achieve when recording this album, but it's safe to say that it really doesn't work on many levels. Songs such as Can't Do Wrong and closing track Shining Black rely too heavily on artificial instruments and end up sounding like 80s throwbacks in all the wrong ways. Better Living Through Cookery is genuinely awful. From the ridiculous lyrics (Your bum will bleed when it's stuffed with meat) to the laughable faux-Yorkshire white rap, it's definitely a low point to an already misguided album.

However, there are a couple of redeeming features of the LP. Opening track Derwent interestingly juxtaposes classic rock with a melodic acoustic section, producing an end result that although confused, is ultimately a charming, enjoyable listen. Fourth track Sales almost works, but is ultimately let down by lyrics that don't reflect the tone or style of the song. Again, the poor production lets Red Threat down; the abrupt halt of the piano decay giving away the MIDI programming origins of most of the instruments on this album.

By writing, recording and releasing their own material completely self sufficiently, Red Threat have seemingly isolated themselves from the real world. In not playing live, their songs miss a critical element of refinement that comes from practising and performing again and again. This is an album by hobbyists, and the songs, lyrics and production completely reflect this. Although it's obviously something that Willis and Warby have taken care and time in making, this album isn't of a standard suitable for commercial release. However, 'Your Call is Important To Us' is in the shops of Sheffield, and is ultimately not worth the money.

While I can sort-of-see what JA and DC were complaining about, I reckon the CD works quite well most of the time, and the mix of styles is (as they pointed out) quite inventive. The vocals are a bit out every now and then, but that's hardly a death sentence; the days of consistently spot-on pitch are (perhaps sadly) long gone. And if the drums sound programmed, so what? There's only two in the band, after all, and they can't be expected to play an entire bands' worth of instruments manually. This is an inevitable fact of life for smaller bands; but they can always recruit new members for gigs as the need arises.

I think I see where JA and DC are coming from, though. The first track on a CD obviously sets the scene for what follows; first impressions really do count. It's sometimes said that the average A&R guy only listens to the first 15 seconds of a demo; that if you haven't got them interested by then, they won't bother listening to the rest. Which is a pity, because (IMHO) the strongest tracks on this CD [I particularly like Death is hard] are the later ones. It'd be interesting to know which tracks were written when, as some of the band's material dates from the early 90s, when they were necessarily much younger than now, and the lyrics and sounds had less emotional history to call on. I'm guessing that the stronger songs are the more recent ones.

The opening track, Derwent, probably also explains their comment about the vocals being "fizzy", as they sound on this track like the treble has been boosted (or the bass reduced) to some extent. Effects like this are always going to be problematic: either you need to keep things 'clean' or else make it sufficiently obviously intentional (like the Strokes do, for example) that there's no risk of anyone thinking it's down to bad production. Til recently I'd also have said that songs featuring loads of local place names were a mistake, but the Arctics have shown that you can definitely keep things local without losing wider national (and in their case international) appeal. (Whether they'll keep it remains to be seen. The songs I remember are the ones that say something general (or striking) enough for them to remain relevant long after I've forgotten why I bought the album in the first place.)

Overall, then, this is a bit of a mixture. Some of the tracks are extremely well constructed (the ending is excellent, and the spoken guest vocals are great), some less so. From a personal perspective, I'd have dropped a few of the weaker tracks and issued a shorter CD, but for a band who explicitly describe themselves as a "joke" and a "hobby", this is a damned sight better than some of the commercial stuff I've paid for in my less sane moments.