It’s here. The Blinders’ album stream has landed. Awash with fear, we hit play. What if it doesn’t replicate the power of their live shows? This isn’t 1994, they won’t get three re-records like Oasis. They have to get this right, the world needs them.
Thankfully, ‘Columbia’ is a triumph. It’s the crowning glory of the punkadelic movement to date. Cabbage may have nudged the door open, but The Blinders, have taken the hinges of, they are this scenes Nirvana.
Johnny Dream’s vocals, at times, are shamanic. His DNA fuses Morrison and Cobain through a prism of English sarcasm, angst and wit. The rage and despair of ‘Brutus’ is a mesmerising display of rock n rolls spirit. There is no element of pretence. No attempt to be cool. This is desperate and oozes from the gut.
‘Columbia’, for all its raw purity, is packed with crowd pleasers. ‘Brave New World’ and ‘Gotta Get Though’ howl and hiss in their dank metropolis but, have scream pop music too. The tornado of punk and psyche are breath-taking, a fine display of style with substance. ‘Rat In Cage’, showcases a Charlatans circa ‘Us and Us Only’ moment the harmonica but, they as they euphorically decree ‘come together we need each other’, you feel bigger things lie ahead.
In 2002, The Strokes and The Libertines reset the wheel. It was perfect tonic for a bloated Britpop world and it reenergised a generation of bands. In 2018, bands are a non-entity. Marginalised more than ever (Kings of Leon headlined Reading and Leeds ffs!), it was going to take something special to buck this trend. Three childhood friends from Doncaster have proved, that music is still as powerful as Dylan, Beatles and the Stones.