The Author: “Taxi”
Searing riffs! Angular chords! Dance beats! It’s 2005 all over again! Except, unfortunately for the Author, it’s not. That said, you can forgive the lads for being a bit behind the times, after all they hail from Jersey in the Channel Islands (closer to north France than England), a locale better known for being the only British territory occupied by the Germans during WWII than for its cutting edge music scene. In fact, the Author’s press release touts them as the first and only band ever to come out of the area, so here’s to the best band in Channel Islands history then. But yeah, the five-piece possess all the trademarks of the British dance-punk sound that defined 2005, sadly they’re just a bit too late to the party to get the same critical reception as their predecessors. That’s not totally fair though; a hot jam is a hot jam any way you look at it and “Taxi” is an excellent debut single, regardless of its temporal setting.
With their hometown in mind, the song’s title and lyrics (”sleepwalking children escape from their lonely village”) take on a greater significance. This is a band desperate to break free from their isolated, ocean-locked setting, and a single like this should have them playing under the bright lights on the mainland in no time. Embracing that Klaxonic future-rock sound with state-of-emergency riffs and shouty group vocals, the track falls somewhere between the manic pacing of “Helicopter” and the spastic abrasiveness of Klaxons’ “Bouncer” cover. It gets your heart racing and your blood pumping, the kind of encore track that could reduce an audience to smoking rubble in a live setting. Even when they slow things down in the bridge you can sense the guitars just waiting to roar back into the frame for the final kill, always ready for some serious shredding at a moment’s notice. The vicious instrumentation and frantic, desperate energy converge to create a damn fine debut single, and while it’s nothing groundbreaking, they’ve definitely got a good thing going and it’ll be interesting to see where the Author go from here.
MP3: “Taxi” - The Author ((highly recommended)) [Alternate Link]