SUNDERBANS – WE ONLY CAN BECAUSE WE CARE
March 13, 2010,
Written by Rachel Clare
Label: Young And Lost Club
Release date: 08/03/10
Website: Myspace
Describing themselves as a mixture of gospel, punk and folk on their myspace page, either this illustrates Sunderbans’ sense of humour or shows them up as being rather confused. Let me make it easy for you. Sunderbans are a London based three-piece indie punk band with high-faluting ideas. There isn’t even a slight whiff of gospel in their music, and the only nod to folk is the odd glockenspiel ‘ting’ in the background, so I think we can safely assume that it is a joke. What there is, however, is a just enough punk angst to keep your angry, teeth-clenching, parent-hating teenage inner-self happy.
‘We Only Can Because We Care’ opens with an ominous, slow building, cymbal rolling, bass guitar caressing prelude comparable to the opening of Spinal Tap’s classic ‘Stonehenge’. Shame there is no Nigel Tufnell monologue to top it off.
It then kicks into a perfectly fine and dandy indie punk record. Nothing more and nothing less. With only three, or at a push four, chords to worry about and a shouty vocal reminiscent of every indie punk band since the dawn of time (‘If in doubt, shout’, right kids?), ‘Sunderbans’ are little more than another run of the mill three piece with big dreams and slightly clichéd creative output. Plus, and I think this says more about my puerile brain than their name choice, I found myself rhyming ‘Sunderbans’ with ‘underpants’ and running it over and over in my head like some kind of playground taunt, which doesn’t really help matters.
However, my childish whimsy aside, they clearly aren’t stupid. There is a certain art to them, as their accompanying video and single artwork shows. They look pretty cool, aren’t acne-ridden 15 year olds (which is always nice), and have created a catchy little bassline on this track which certainly got me jigging about the place. I just wish that the dark and epic expectation so portentously presented in the first 20 seconds of the track were realized in the following 4 minutes. It is not a terrible song, by any means, and there is an army of skinny jean clad, fedora wearing trendies out there baying for this sort of thing so I wish them well and will no doubt hear of them in the future, after all this is the stuff that teens are made on. Perhaps next time, however, they should try to push the punk rock envelope a little, as I feel that they have the potential to be really rather good, underpants be damned.
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