It pays to be young. More specifically it pays to be young in a grown up’s world. Take as proof, if you will, the Jackson Five, Charlotte Church, the cast of Bugsy Malone and odd-toff child-star antique-expert sex-change chap James (nee Lauren) Harries. No-one said anything about long term gains. We might not be skirting quite that close to conception here, but The Subways obviously consider their youth so bankable that they saw fit to title their debut album accordingly. You must remember Ash? Not the mature chart-punk aficionados we now know, but the embryonic bundle of GCSE-bunking teen testosterone that first lovably nipped at our heels a decade ago. There’s more than a bit of that going on here, only The Subways haven’t been quite as lucky with the sound that comes out of the speakers in the end. But everything up to that point is undeniably spot on.
So we’re dealing with youth as the defining characteristic, as its strength and as its Achilles heel. Youth accounts for the way they zing around this record like a shiny punk-propelled ball-bearing in a tiny tin tub. That’s an impressive and endearing characteristic. Unfussy pop tunes and cute, irrepressible vigor to boot. Nice. But youth also claims responsibility for the fact that this record seems to be all instinct over experience, and they don’t always have enough to get them through. They’re out to play in the same room as big kids like the Von Bondies and a much less experimental Yeah Yeah Yeahs, but it’s lifestyle and context that fashions those bands as much as anything else. Welwyn Garden City doesn’t seem to have offered up much in that department.
These are generic songs, performed well. And that’s a bit of a compliment, because the energy is undeniable, if less obvious than live on a stage. ‘Oh Yeah’ brims with life and a drumbeat that feels like a space-hopper stalking you, grin plastered ubiquitously from curve to curve. It should be their signature tune. ‘Mary’ and ‘With You’ veer brilliantly Britpop-wards, between ‘All Mod Cons’ and ‘I Should Coco’, feeling stitched into the fabric of this country’s pop heritage. But they’re let down equally by acoustic Oasis cast-offs in ‘No Goodbyes’ and the lamentably lazy ‘She Sun’. And ‘Rock N Roll Queen’ and ‘City Pavement’ are just sub-Vines dirges of little particular point, perhaps redeemed slightly by Charlotte’s brief sticky-candy interjections. It might be their lifeblood now, but you get the feeling that if they better this – which they could – youth may well be turned round and used as an excuse.