The View - Which Bitch? [2009]

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tracklist:
1. Typical Time 2 1:36
2. 5Rebbeccas 3:50
3. One Off Pretender 3:29
4. Unexpected 3:39
5. Temptation Dice 3:47
6. Glass Smash 4:20
7. Distant Doubloon 4:36
8. Jimmy’s Crazy Conspiracy 3:47
9. Covers 3:23
10. Double Yellow Lines 4:09
11. Shock Horror 4:07
12. Realisation 3:41
13. Give Back The Sun 5:54
14. Gem Of A Bird 6:37

It’s exactly two years since Hats Off to the Buskers, the Dundonians’ Mercury-nominated debut album, and in some ways Which Bitch? is a straightforwardly linear progression. Owen Morris once again produces, and songs such as Jimmy’s Crazy Conspiracy, Double Yellow Lines and 5Rebeccas revisit the kind of frantic, post-Libertines indie-rock that defined their debut. The primary difference is that these songs are properly together: massive terrace-chant choruses come shackled to reverbed guitars, Kyle Falconer’s torrential street-smart lyrics and a drum sound that aches for an arena to fill.

But if Which Bitch? marks a muscular upping of commercial ambition, it also finds the View making significant strides in less obvious directions. Horns, strings and woodwind jump in and out of the mix, while they display a knack for twisting songs into surprising shapes: Glass Smash veers off into a sinister little sing-song counter-melody (”We’ve done this/ We’ve done that”), while Distant Doubloon and Realisation are like a Caledonian take on the Coral.

Falconer’s soulful, untamed voice remains the central hook. Now soft, now scratchy, now sweet, now sour, it’s never less than compelling. When Paolo Nutini pops in to duet on the sweet-as-peaches strum of Covers, the combined Unexpected; Distant Doubloonvocal identity couldn’t be more Scottish if the Krankies were adding harmonies.

What might be gimmicky is actually a vital part of the mix. There’s no pose or posture with the View, and an identifiably Celtic sense of despair lies not very far beneath the hedonism and hangovers. It’s there in the acoustic chords of the beautiful Unexpected; there, too, in the many tales of disappointed, desperate people waiting for that “six-number saviour”.

It all means that something reassuringly real lies at the heart of the music.

Though it may occasionally be a little too skittish for its own good, Which Bitch? confirms that the View are a band with a vibrant imagination and an abundance of ideas. For that reason alone, their return is very welcome.
guardian

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