Event

TIMES NEW VIKING/AXEMEN/THE MAD SCENE

The album title they explain is "...our born again record. We wanted to get it out of the way before we were washed up. It is a message to our future selves." Quite what their future selves will think when listening to opener Â'Martin Luther King Day' is anyone's guess with its refrain "As the nights grow longer / Ideas will never stay" hinting at the band's creative restlessness which is further illustrated by only one song on the record passing the three minute mark. There are classic TNV songs on there likeÂ 'I Smell Bubblegum'Â and 'City On Drugs'; all shouted boy/girl vocals and chiming organ, clattering along in an echo of The Fall. There is also evidence of the moodier, even darker, atmospherics that the band had talked about during recording. Both Â 'Little World' and '2/11 Don't Forget'Â visit new ground with an odder, more down tempo feel, whereas gems like 'No Time, No Hope'Â andÂ 'High Holidays'Â show the band's oft-proclaimed love of the sound of 80s Flying Nun records, particularly The Clean. In true Times New Viking style the catchy-beyond-catchy single 'Move To California'Â almost didn't make the record. You'll still be singing it even after final track 'Take The Piss' - a glorious addition to the canon of shouty girl punk songs - is over. Elsewhere 'Something Moore' sounds like it might have popped up on one of the brilliant 'Homework' collections of old DIY releases of which the band possess an encyclopedic knowledge. Born Again Revisited leaves you with the same sense of awe you had upon hearing a new batch of Guided By Voices classics in the last century. Where do all these amazing melodies come from? This is a band that can write a pop song to rival any in music history and is usually two ideas ahead of us at any given time. - M. Bowen, 2009