Tag Archives: the futureheads

#1218: The Futureheads – Skip to the End

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Goddamn it, it’s been nearly 20 years since this song came out, and I vividly remember watching MTV2 when its music video was showing on the regular. That places me at the age of 11, nearing the end of my days in primary school. ‘Skip to the End’ was unveiled as the first single from what was going to be the new second album by The Futureheads, News and Tributes. It was something I wasn’t expecting because 1, I wasn’t reading up on music like that back then, and 2, another song by the band had been released some months prior that had been announced as a standalone thing and nothing more. But none of it mattered. The band were officially back, back. And owning the band’s debut album on CD like I did, and still do, it was an exciting thing.

I wouldn’t be able to specifically remember the very first time I watched the video/heard the song, but I do recall at least thinking initially that it maybe wasn’t as immediate as a ‘Decent Days and Nights’ or ‘Area’. The verses hopped along with clicking cross-sticks and stabbing guitar chords. Guitarist/singer Barry Hyde delivers his vocals, unusually without the notable backing vocals that were ingrained in the Futureheads DNA. But then the chorus comes in, those backing vocals arrive with it and everything felt all right again. It took a while to get there, but that familiar Futureheads feeling was established. And after hearing it probably almost every morning before school in that time, it made sense that it would stick in my head and I would add it on a phone so I could write my feelings about it nearly two decades later.

The lyrical matter is pretty simple. The narrator here states that if there was a chance to somehow go forward in time and witness the end of their relationship with someone, they would do so to see if there was any point in starting it in the first place. Whether it’s a happy end or a broken heart is the main factor with which they would make their decision. There’s no answer to how the relationship in question goes because obviously it isn’t something anyone’s able to do. It’s just a song to say if they could, they would. But if the second verse is anything to go by, Hyde sings about “going through the roof” (getting very upset) when his lady makes sense, it may be fair to say that things could be going a little better.

#1131: The Futureheads – Robot

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While it’s not the last song you’ll be seeing from The Futureheads on here, ‘Robot’ is definitely the last representative from the band’s 2004 debut that’ll get its own dedicated post. Me and that self-titled album go a long way back. It’s a story I told in the very first post of this series, which boils down to ‘my mum got it for me at Tesco’. I knew of ‘Decent Days and Nights’, and ‘Hounds of Love’ had probably been out as a single at that point. I can’t remember, it’s all so long ago. But when I saw that CD on the shelf, I do feel like I sort of grabbed at it without any hesitation. Whatever was in that small pea-brain of mine told me that it was an album worth having.

It was. I still have that same copy sitting on the shelf in my room. The ring holding the CD in the case is busted, and was from the day I got it, but it was the music that counted at the end of the day. If you don’t know The Futureheads, they were a part of the big post-punk revival boom that was going on in the mid-2000s. What I think set them apart from a lot of those other groups were their knack for some glorious harmonies and fantastic countermelodies, all while still delivering some chunky, raw performances. The album’s first track ‘Le Garage’ introduces all this, and it carries on in follow-up ‘Robot’. The track’s only two minutes long, but they manage to pack all the goodness in there.

The meaning behind ‘Robot’ is quite simple. It’s from the perspective of a robot, who knows what they are, what they’re programmed to do, knows how long they live for. This robot seems to be happy with this existence, in service to the human race. That is until the song’s final moments where it begins to question why it doesn’t have a mind, begins to malfunction and then stops working. At least that’s what I get from the looping riff and sudden stop that close out the track. I enjoy this one quite a bit. As the album’s second track, it keeps the momentum of the record’s opening moments rolling. It’s only two minutes long too, so nothing to dwell upon, you know? Just a few verses and choruses and then it’s done and onto the next one. I’ll always appreciate this album. Don’t think it got better than it for the band, but there are still a couple tracks from albums that followed that I can always get behind. Those are for days far from now.

#718: The Futureheads – Le Garage

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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.

My iPod #544: The Futureheads – Hounds of Love

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It took a while for me to listen to the original “Hounds of Love” as recorded by Kate Bush in 1985. Twenty years later I was ten and beginning to get into this ‘indie music’ stuff when The Futureheads, the four-piece ‘post-punk revival’ band from Sunderland, released their cover of the song. At the time I was unaware of that it was a song that had already existed for two decades, though that does explain why her name was credited in the liner notes of the album.

The track is a prime example of what a cover version should be. The Futureheads don’t merely take the song and create a carbon copy, but add their own style whilst remaining true to the original’s musicality. Differing from the Prince Charming-like stomp of Kate Bush’s track, the band’s cover plays like a soundtrack of a man on the run from these hounds. Barry Hyde’s vocals succeed in expressing the passion and emotion displayed within the lyrics, he seems to elongate syllables and borderline shouts unable to contain himself, and the background ‘oh-oh’ vocals of Ross Millard, Jaff Craig and Dave Hyde give the track a great edge, providing a bold sense of solidarity as Hyde sings of this crisis he is going through.

One of my favourite covers. Good times.

My iPod #372: The Futureheads – First Day

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“First Day” is a tune from The Futureheads’ first album. The version you hear above is not the same as the one that is on the album. The version on the album is a lot cleaner, production’s makes everything a bit clearer. It’s also a bit faster too. Unfortunately that version is nowhere to be seen on YouTube, so what you get above will have to do.*

Just over two minutes long, “First Day” is a punky number filled with quirky guitar lines and those trademark harmonising vocals that the group utilised throughout the debut. I read an interpretation somewhere saying that this song was actually about life, with the first verse welcoming the listener to their first day and the chorus congratulating you on joining the human race….

To be honest, I just think it’s just a song about someone experiencing their first day at their new job. ‘Cause that is what’s explicitly said. It doesn’t get much deeper than that. It seems that on this first day however, the worker is pressured into doing more work and going onto the next stage even though they’re nowhere near ready yet. “Faster, faster” the employees yell, and just as they do the song pace changes too. Not just once, but twice.

*18/8/20 – The album version is now up, has been for quite some time at this point, you can listen to it below.