The debut album by The Futureheads is one I’ve owned for a very long time. I was 9 almost turning 10, was in Tesco, sure the CD on the shelf, asked my mum if I could have it, she asked “Do I like them?”, I replied “Yes.”, and to my surprise she put it in the trolley. The band were shown frequently on MTV2 back in those days even though I’m sure I had only seen the videos for ‘Decent Days and Nights’ and ‘Hounds of Love’ by that point. I didn’t know how the rest of their material would go.

So to start the record off is ‘Le Garage’, a song which to this day I don’t really have any idea on what it could be about. Despite that, when those twinkling guitars faded in and the “do-do-aah” vocals came in I was hooked instantly. Singer and guitarist Barry Hyde starts yelping away in that Northern tone of his for the first verse, and then the song just launches off from there. Backing vocals enter the frame at various points overlapping Hyde’s vocals and repeating what he saying with no restraint, the guitars sound messy and there’s not much melody from them except this one note that’s endlessly locked in. It’s quite the rush, never letting up, and when you think it’s about to really get into its stride it comes to a sudden stop.

I’ve found that there are some songs that begin an album that I can never listen to by themselves; they never sound as good without the rest of the album following them. ‘Le Garage’ doesn’t come under that category. Not for me.