It takes a rather confident collective to open their debut album with a sprawling, seven-minute long epic; ladies and gentlemen, meet The Longcut. Originally a quartet, the experimental post-rock, drum-machine-lovin' outfit formed at Manchester University in 2002. When their vocalist decided that the rock 'n' roll lifestyle was not for him, the trio decided to continue as instrumentalists and invested in a budget drum machine to enhance their sound. A Call and Response is not an completely instrumental album, yet it's all-too-often clear that strident vocalist Stuart Ogilvie would rather be anywhere but behind the mic. Still, while his intonations are often flat and one-dimensional, the sprawling, vaporous backing tracks pack a tight-fisted punch where necessary, and compensate for the identikit vocal method. Drawing from their hometown's expansive musical heritage is almost expected of any Mancunian band these days; and here, The Longcut adhere to the Hacienda School of Imitation, with smudges of the Madchester scene and The Fall adorning their score - not to mention that of their current contemporaries, Doves, The Music and NYC's The Rapture. It's not all lazy clones of former grandeur, though; Gravity In Crisis's spacey atmospherics are both intricately melodic and darkly coarse, A Quiet Life's visceral industrial rock/dance beat is a joyful head-nodding affair, and The Kiss Off's shimmering whisper and shifting drum pattern brings a change of pace where needed. The Longcut's sound is far from original, yet their talent for creating both surging post-rock anthems and reflective melodies is not something to be sniffed at. What's more, they still manage it better than sterile Madchester charlatans Kasabian and their ilk. A Call and Response probably won't make many album of the year lists, and it's probably too invariable to be groundbreaking in any way; but when The Longcut do Call, they're worthy of a Response, at the very least.
