Uncut - Modern Currencies Review
by Patrick Muldowney
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Every wannabe rocker who took a side alley left of the dial just to avoid Nickelback Drive and Metallica Terrace, has wished they could be in a band as cool as Uncut. Modern Currencies is a tour de course of tracks that intrigue the popular girl toward the marginal man. Christian Slater would pump Uncut on pirate radio, just as boys with mod cuts, black suits and sunglasses should make this car stereo fodder for onlooking babes.
"Dark Horse" sets an ambitious mood for Modern Currencies, blasting off with nothing more than four counts on a cymbal as precursor. This track immediately establishes the importance of guitars by layering at least three tracks over tom-filled beats. The energetic angst of the music is vindicated by Ian Worang's lyrical suggestion: "Let's just kill all the living/They're not all made to live." "Dark Horse" reaches perfection on the outro, which pays tribute to Swervedriver's "Rave Down", the band most noted for brilliantly layering ridiculous amounts of guitar tracks in the studio. Uncut provides a clear indication that simple pop rock is not in the forecast for this album, yet, through its frank and powerful delivery, mass appeal will be possible. The intricacies can be enjoyed by some without forsaking the many.
Modern listeners will undoubtedly find that songs like "Hideaway" and "The Night Can See" sound like the newest new wave (Interpol, The Bravery, and so on), but the attitude (on top of the sound) of the overall product reminds me mostly of Girls Against Boys circa Park Avenue. Of course, this album may have a little more sustenance since it goes beyond the topics of sex and money, but, like any band that sounds too cool to put down, we tend to overeat until the disc loses taste. "Kiss Me" and "Never Say Never" change up the new wave scenery, although they gravitate further into the pop realm of The Jesus & Mary Chain and New Order, which doesn't solve the pop dilemma of consume and destroy. I would have given my right ear to make an album like GVSB in the mid-90s and feeling (for one moment) as hip as they must have felt while writing and performing. Uncut evokes a similar mindset. My only concern is that being "too cool" is a bubble reputation, and, as I no longer think about GVSB in the same way; Uncut could find difficulty evolving from this point. Regardless of the unpredictable future, Modern Currencies is a sonically fantastic adventure from a band with impeccable taste in music.
Tracks added to iPod: Dark Horse, Hideaway, Breaking Glass, Never Say Never, Kiss Me, Chain Fight, The Night Can See
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Uncut - Modern Currencies
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