Shapes - Unsung Hero EP - Review

UNSIGNED DEMO BY JAMES CUNLIFFE Somewhere there's a warehouse party in desperate need of being Shape-crashed. This is a band in peak physical condition and 'Unsung Heroes' delivers razor-blade, stuff-strutting angularity to fulfil a year-long promise of being the best band in Luton - at very least. 'Big Time Charlie' and reworked live favourite 'Too Many Times' produce savage baselines that bellow gladiatorial dance floor war crys, filling in where Kubichek! have been disgracefully ignored, and where Foals promised but so spectacularly failed to deliver with album 'Antidotes'. Then there's the agitated, semiautomatic rat-tat-at of 'Machete Street' which shows a deliciously dark side. But it's 'Fools and Horses' that impresses most. Muhammad Ali once warned opponents, "if the left don't get you then the right one's gonna" and this track has the right hook of a world class puncher. Its pulse raising chant of "We are the unsung heroes of our day" may have a different sentiment but is cut from the same fearless cloth that inspired Liam Gallagher to tell a generation that they could live forever, and Ian Brown before that all should adore him. More than that, 'Fools and Horses' is the tale of the town that made them - a manifesto and a design for life in Luton and every other downat- heel satellite town from Dudley to Dunstable. To others Luton is a town with a football team in the doldrums, a defunct car industry and a reputation for having only one redeeming feature - the way out. But this is Shapes' home and in them Luton has a band of spokesmen to dissent against the nay-sayers. "I'm gonna scream and shout until I burst/ We were cursed for being voted Britain's worst" sees singer Jamie MacDonald cut the curse of 'that' book to say it may be a 'crap town' but it's his crap town - YOUR crap town! And as with the chorus of "You've gone and made up your mind before you've even give it a try/ You're thinking that you're special," MacDonald's every line is incisively chiselled and provocatively delivered to take back his home, and, in Robin Hood fashion, give it back to the people. You should be very, very grateful.