Klaxons Myths Of The Near Future by: Kev Lavery Tue:13-Mar-07 Label: Universal Year: 2007 WB rating 48 out of 100

A Klaxon is a warning device: be it a siren, bell, buzzer, electric sounder, fire alarm, beacon, or hooter. I guess this is really the perfect name for a band such as Klaxons. There are a lot of fire alarm sort of sounds, a few sirens and a hooter or two. Klaxons are part of a new (and apparently exciting) genre known as indie rave or, sometimes, new rave. Oh how I abhor that word. Another word for rave is blether.

My mother once described her sister as a bletherer. It basically meant that she went on and on with no topic, point or reason for a long time. That’s what raves and rave style music feel like for me. I guess that’s why people take drugs at them. Klaxons' Myths of the Near Future isn't technically a bad album, it is just that, like drugs, it disagrees with me. One thing that bugs me is that they're not ‘The Klaxons’; granted I understand the name, and this is by no means a new debate in today’s music, but it is just that if a band was called Buzzers, for example, it doesn't make a terrible amount of sense without the ‘the’ preceding it. And how it ruins the flow of my sentences; I have enough trouble writing as it is without having to form sentences around what my brain insists is a gross grammatical error.

What Klaxons do is very much ‘rave’ inspired music. It is repetitive, lyrically more than musically, but repetitive all the same. The problem I find generally with this album is that I know that what Klaxons are doing provides a lot of enjoyment for a certain sort of person. But this sort of person isn’t me. This sort of person’s lifestyle consisting of what we’ve learned through popular culture to be, rightly or wrongly, prevailing British sensibilities. They like drugs. They just eat them up in their tiny tenement flats while wearing jackets over the top of their hooded jumpers. I guess it must be these kids that like Klaxons. They’re ‘cool’ and into the ‘indie scene’ but need an excuse, or rather a soundtrack, for their drug taking. They’ve moved on since raves and happy-pants (although there is apparently a lot of glow-stick waving at Klaxons shows).

The bulk of the music is your standard indie music with a few glaring differences. As far as I can tell most of the drums on this album are programmed. They may be live drums that have been produced and altered to fit in with the bleeps and beeps Klaxons have going here. Basically everything on this album has been altered in one way or another and, as such, it seems that one is supposed to enjoy it in this altered state (glow sticks?) and apparently the kids do.

‘Golden Skans’, one of the singles released of this album, is the track that I really do enjoy. Beware though, many have been mislead in the past by bands releasing their most commercially sounding single. ‘Golden Skans’ is just this. It sounds like Doves (another band devoid of ‘the’) would have sounded like if they’d taken more of their Sub Sub (the dance-pop band they were before a fire burnt everything and they restarted as Doves) sound and melded it with what they became. It’s not a bad song. About some sort of God of some description as far as I can tell. I have been using the phrase “as far as I can tell” a lot in this review. It’s purely because anything I find on Klaxons says ‘glowsticks’, ‘rave’, ‘indie’ and ‘pretty’ instead of giving me any real information. Not that I needed any information; this album is terribly transparent. You know exactly who the kids who made it are after the first listen. They’re the kind of people that I didn’t like at school and this album is, although thoroughly championed by many, just not for me. It’s like those kids at school I didn’t like. Other kids liked them, but I got bored with them easily and thought they sounded annoying.

Another of my major gripes with Myths of the Near Future (and by the way what’s with drug-users and the future?) is that the band employs, almost constantly, octave singing. Not harmonies. Generally complete songs will pass with the main vocal singing while another sings an octave above. It’s a great effect when used sparingly but is overdone on this album to a great extent.

This review was really difficult to write. I have explained to countless people the strengths and weaknesses of this album and Klaxons as a whole. This was done, however, by doing impressions of drum beats and using words like “boooop”, “peeyow”, “toot-toot”, “it’s like that bloody video game that goes…”, and various other words, phrases, and noises. Some people will hate this band and some people, like the British and their drugs, will just eat them up. Basically, listen to the two singles. ‘Magick’ will give you are a far better idea of the band than ‘Golden Skans’. If you like ‘Magick’ then you might like it. If you like ‘Golden Skans’ just go listen to your old Doves album. You haven’t listened to that album in ages.