Ultrasound
Album: Play For Today
Label: Fierce Panda
Tracks: 10
Website: https://www.ultrasoundtheband.com

That Ultrasound aren't remembered as leading lights of Britpop has little to do with their ability, more to do with their ability to get along. Some 13 years after their bitter split, they've decided what the world needs now is a second album of chin-up, downright heroic prog-indie. And here is Play For Today…

As a snapshot of our times that echoes the late-70s/early-80s heyday of BBC television drama that was characterised by the second flourishing of kitchen sink drama that was the original Play For Today, the album taps into that part of psyche that wears falling short like a cloak of comfort. The album plays Eddie the Eagle to the Chris Hoy of Ultrasound's Class of 1999 peers like Coldplay and Muse.

On the other hand it throws up a clutch of honest tunes that are staunchly unafraid to pull out the stops. In that respect they recall the similarly overlooked Longpigs from an earlier generation. Songs like the epic Beautiful Sadness manage a twist of Suede's grotesque glam stylings fed through a muscular configuration of self-confidant rock that invokes the spirit of The Who at their early 70s live peak.

Album opener Welfare State finds them making common cause with the underclass exploited by Jeremy Kyle and demonised by the right wing. It also manages a slew of self-reverential lyrics chronicling their own absence from the fray. Twins delivers cinemascope soundscape that has elements of early Verve and various prog progenitors, while Nonsense offers a jaunty jangle that feels a bit like the band coasting in neutral and the brass band meets acoustic guitar and piano on Between Two Rivers conjures images of Tom Courtenay meeting Morrissey down by the canal.

Far more substantial is the bombastic Goodbye Baby, Amen; and the closing Sovereign, with its extravagant chord progressions and expansive attitude begs a field full of arms-aloft devotees to go with it.

Good to have them back.

Nick Churchill
www.thegranvillechambers.co.uk