 | | Power Overload |
From the well-known and much hyped to the almost anonymous, Power Overload casts its net across 20 cuts, including a myriad of styles to choose from and such a range of talent that it makes for interesting, exciting and occasionally uncomfortable listening. Young upstarts Fear Of Music and rowdy wonders The Longcut bookend proceedings with the kind of riotous tunes that have got many gig-goers very excited already, while The Deadbeats and Liam Frost both follow their country route, with Frost’s I Woke Up From… sneaking in a lashing of folk for good measure. Elsewhere, the current trend for electro punk rears its head into The Whip’s New Order rip-off Frustration, Dirty Circus’ chaotic Jobseekers Allowance and The KBC’s wonderfully lunatic Poisonous Emblem, and the fine tradition of twisted Manc indie continues with the help of Polytechnic’s toe-tapping Penguin, , Movement’s off-kilter Winter Girl. Indeed, there’s even room for that uniquely epic rush of rock we do so well up here, thanks to Omerta’s skyscraping Learn To Love The System, Kill The Young’s punked-up Origin Of Illness, Day For Airstrikes’ instrumentally epic Smile Happy No Face and Lisa Brown’s stripped down Anna. Sadly, not every artist included was quite ready for such a spotlight. Whatever their gigs might have suggested, the under-considered and naïve nature of Nancy Cunliffe’s caterwauling Place To Shelter, The Ending Of…’s over derivative A Birthday Girl and redcarsgofaster’s frankly dull Without Measure show they’re just not ready to step up to a recording studio. Even Keith and Former Bullies, both bands that have proved themselves more than capable of producing something fantastic, supply tunes that simply don’t do them justice. Power Overload is possibly the most eclectic and vibrant mix of Mancunian music ever. If you packed it up and chucked it into the foundations of the next block of flats, it’d serve as the best time capsule going to let the future know exactly how we were using and abusing guitars at the tail end of 2005. | 
