All five members of The Rumble Strips hail from the Devon/Cornwall area, but it wasn’t until they relocated to London that they actually formed a band. Normally, geography doesn’t have that much bearing on a group’s sound, but The Rumble Strips’ infectious, brass-driven guitar pop is far removed from the brooding introspective wave of me-too bands currently infecting the English capital. They’ve far more in common with loveable Scousers The Zutons, and even veer towards the more obtuse but fun-loving Welsh acts like the Super Furries.
That said, Girls And Weather is definitely a mood album. Try listening to it when you’re not at your chirpiest and it’s guaranteed to irritate you to the same degree as being forced to sit through a Keeping Up Appearances omnibus. Sometimes, you’re just not in the mood for endless smiley, happy, shiny upbeat melodies, and if there’s one real criticism of this debut album it’s that the tone rarely wavers below psychotic happiness.
Frontman Charlie Waller (formerly of Vincent Villain and the Villains) is also unlikely to win any Ivor Novello songwriting awards. Indeed, The Rumble Strips’ simplistic rhyming structures and the adolescent poetry that makes up the majority of their lyrics (‘No Soul’, ‘Clouds’, ‘Cowboy’) would be completely unpalatable, were it not for the trumpet and sax that rescue their tunes from the bedsit and release them into the open air. Tom Gurbutt’s sax and Henry Clark’s trumpet are an intrinsic element of these songs, rather than an afterthought, adding a welcome dash of excitement to proceedings and helping to differentiate them from the current crop of British guitar hopefuls.
While I don’t think I could take an entire evening of their forced jollity in a sweaty club, The Rumble Strips could be a perfect festival band, when a half hour of tracks like the dumb but ridiculously catchy ‘Alarm Clock’, ‘Hate Me (You Do)’ or ‘Motorcycle’ would be just the ticket. The former song sees our hero getting all anti-establishment by smashing his alarm clock, while the latter is all about daydreaming that your pushbike would turn into a “fast moving, street cruising, geek losing motorbike.”
The painted-on smiles of the dozen songs here do start to wear thin after a while, but there are at least four cracking singles that deserve full-on radio submission. Interesting (if hardly essential) listening, and a welcome change from the sub-Joy Division intensity that most London-based bands seem intent on subjecting us to lately.