These Are Powers – All Aboard Future

I stumble in through my front door. I’m drinking warm lager from a pint glass stolen from one of Bristol’s many late-night drinking establishments, and I’m wondering what the hell to play very loud to annoy my housemates and fall asleep to. I chance across These Are Powers’ latest release, my Rich Thane-selected RANDOM CHOICE album for the month. The conditions aren’t exactly perfect for a first listen of an album I’m gonna have to review, but, as it turns out, the album is perfect for the conditions.I’d actually just got back from seeing the dull, uninspired indie-rock of current Radio1 darlings General Fiasco, so perhaps in that context anything would have felt like an absolute joy, but there is definitely something to be said for These Are Powers’ second full-length - it’s carnal and visceral and physical; despite being all beeps and electrics and computers, it feels human, it feels like raw emotion and testosterone and it definitely sounds like four a.m. drunken stupors, begging you to wobble around like one of those 1980’s dancing coke cans.In comparable terms, it sounds like what you would probably expect an ex-Liar (Power’s are fronted by Pat Noecker, one of the original Liars line-up) to sound like - cut free from the more commercial constraints that Liars tend to work by this is, at best, what you always beg for Liars to break down into, their music at it’s most minimal and bare, but at its worst, it’s what you always fear Liars could become, tracks like ‘Double Double Yolk’ coming across as deliberately awkward, like a bad pastiche of their Drum’s Not Dead-era.It’s definitely not a comfortable listen, and I wonder had I first experienced it in any other state, would I have dismissed it as indulgent waffle from a former member of one of rock’s most indulgent bands. So my opening story isn’t just a fun tale - it’s a recommendation. See a shitty band, get so pissed you can’t think, and let the pounding ‘ghost-punk’ (Noecker’s phrase, not mine) of All Aboard Future carry you off. 70%mp3:> These Are Powers: 'Life Of Birds'These Are Powers on MySpace