The Young Knives - Turn Tail
Tweed, briars, slippers, The Telegraph, fox hunting, voting Conservative and colonialism were all once the hallmarks of the British upper classes. These traditional stereotypes are now under threat though • not from a resurgent proletariat but from a new bastion of the bourgeois. The Young Knives are quite simply the best current act in the UK. And I’m not restricting this to music. They would beat Bruce Forsyth, Manchester United, Gordon Ramsay, Alan Sugar and Gordon Brown to a bloody pulp in any head to head. They can do no wrong.
‘Turn Tail’ is blisteringly brilliant posh punk from their latest album the equally entertaining ‘Superabundance’. Vocally it’s intense, bizarre and perfectly put together, fast, slow, loud, soft, it couldn’t have been better made if it were built brick by brick from Lego. Then there are the frenetic instrumentals, coaxing a quite literal aural orgasm from start to finish. It’s brilliant despite being about the most lyrically ambiguous and confusing song written since the heyday’s of R.E.M.
Give them the Mercury prize, give them Oscars, give them their own part of Wales, give them a permanent seat on The UN Security Council, give them whatever they bloody well need to make more music this good. The Young Knives rock.