When it comes to hype–that bloody creation of the music press–it is almost never good, and it is certainly always a bitch. This is the one thing that plucks unsuspecting fledgling bands from the garage of obscurity and places them (and their thrift store duds) on the cover of The Fader or can file their shit-recorded LP under “Pitchfork: Best New Music.” And a band so fully armed with a bevy of listen-to-us gimmicks like ¡Forward, Russia! is engineered for this hype machine: Their name has punctuation that could be lifted from a Tom Wolfe novel (though, the first punctuation mark may be dropped); they hail from Leeds, the Brit music scene hotbed dubbed “New Yorkshire”; their songs boast of numbers-only titles (”Four,” “Thirteen”).
As part of the new Brit-pack hitting the States after a good showing back home, ¡Forward, Russia! is attached to the same sort of bizarre success story shared with their peers. Formed sometimes in early 2004 with two former Black Helicopters (Tom Woodhead, vocals and synth; Rob Canning, bass) and a brother-and-sister team (Whiskas, guitar; Katie Nicholls, drums), they first received recognition in April 2005 when single “Nine” (a split with This Et Al) sold out within a week of its release. Another single and a UK tour followed. And like most good indie outfits, the band recently made a good showing at SXSW before going on to sign with Mute Records.
¡Forward, Russia! pulls the typical post-punk song and, well, dance. There are glimmers of Brit-pop sensibility here and there (and are often fleeting when found), but often, they rely on being hard, playing aggressively, and producing cuts that could have been scraped off the toilet floor. Woodhead yells and screams and strips his larynx while the others, um, just make well-orchestrated noise. And while certainly a bit danceable, the underlying idea is that ¡Forward, Russia! took everything that’s existing in music right now and did it well. There’s nothing terribly groundbreaking, but there is something terribly good about a band who can do something particularly well, making these Brit kids worthy of a few listens beyond their buzz-band infancy.
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