The Sunshine Underground - Spell It Out
Former critical darlings, Leeds’ The Sunshine Underground release their third single from ‘Nobody’s Coming To Save You’, their sophomore album, to a haze of disinterest. As cruel as that may sound, it’s rooted in the four-piece’s debut being unfortunately described as "first great album of the new rave movement", by NME. The genre, that made a flash in a pan look like a sustained inferno, prompted almost a universal exodus from under its banner. In this particular case of escaping the yoke The Sunshine Underground have taken refuge in the grand-sounding pop of Kasabian or White Lies. Unfortunately without the personality those bands manage to put into their songs, even if that is just soundtracking arrogance and morbidness, respectively.
‘Spell It Out’ starts with a messy cacophony off thrashing indie guitars and a bouncing bassline leading into synthesiser-heavy verse. After the pre-chorus appearing to stay a little too long it’s almost instantly appreciated and missed because its replacement, a dull but brash europop stomp, fully squanders whatever interest had been generated by the verse. The functional vocals play out lyrics that definitely fall under that category of tried and tested although the notion of “Only giving you what you want” comes across as a desperate grab at widespread appreciation. Another dose of stadium dirge, it seems The Sunshine Underground have speedily left an average niche genre for an equally average mainstream genre. It leaves them at a tricky fork in the road, do they redraw and reshape their sound, to make of the genre what they desire or settle for middle-billing on endless ‘Driving Anthems of the Year!’ CDs? All you can say of this song is it can’t spell that out.