Where oh where to start? Okay, let’s go back to July 2006. There’s a track that closes out Sonic Boom Six‘s debut album, ‘The Ruff Guide to Genre Terrorism’, called ‘Until the Sunlight Comes’. It’s a monolithic seven minutes of stadium-rock guitar riffs, mellow yet haunting vocals and a soundscape more epic than Ridley Scott’s back-catalogue. It’s this song that ‘City of Thieves’ takes its lead from, before upping the ante and punting this past sound into the stratosphere. Simply put, this album is big. Really, really big! Think you’ve heard everything Sonic Boom Six has to offer? Think again.
‘City of Thieves’, the third studio album proper from Manchester‘s answer to a musical blender, is a concept album. Not in the way that Pink Floyd made concept albums full of interludes, inexplicable tinkering and ‘Wizard of Oz’ timescales, but 12 songs following a singular theme. That theme is the deteriorating urban landscape. Amongst other things we get to hear about inner-city economics, nasty Saturday night high street war zones, and, of course, those oh so scary ‘yoofs’. The message is at times a scathingly bleak damnation of the UK, and much of the developed world to boot. The music though is anything but bleak.
Across the opening three tracks we get a snapshot of what’s to come over the next 45 minutes. ‘(Welcome To) The City of Thieves’ is the traditionally instantaneous introduction that SB6 has become known for. An atmospheric start absorbed by some of those stadium guitars. ‘Back 2 Skool’ is a breathlessly up-tempo jaunt that has the odd moment of Skunk Anansie about it. It’s all fast drumming, fast guitaring and fast singing. ‘The Road to Hell is Paved with Good Intentions’ takes this pace and injects a performance enhancing steroid into the vein. It’s an absolute onslaught mashing a big hook of a chorus with a hint of downtuned ska guitars all at a galloping rate. If you’re not knackered after these three songs there’s something very wrong.
Immediately apparent in these opening minutes is the fact that the summery feel of last album ‘Arcade Perfect’ has taken a back seat. This isn’t the casual-listener friendly offering of that album. Don’t get me wrong, ‘Arcade Perfect’ is a good record but it didn’t really follow-up the dangerously eclectic feeling of the debut album and there were a few moments that were not completely cohesive, more a collection of individual songs than an album. Only ‘Rum Little Scallywag‘ and ‘Through the Eyes of a Child’ come across as holdovers from the previous album. The latter is a ska number with a dancehall feel that features New York legend, King Django. The former is a short little reggae offering nestled bang in the middle of the record that acts as a breather between the heavy offensive that comes before and after it.
‘City of Thieves’ proves to be very much a collective affair. As well as Django, SB6 extends its collective hand to Robin Leitch of stablemates Random Hand on ‘A Bright Cold Day In April’. Influential King Prawn man Al Rumjen lends his own personal panache to ‘Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!’, a tweaky, twangy hip-hop offering that may be the strongest track on the album (although pin-pointing such is near impossible, there’s not a single dud here). Actually, it’s the other hip-hop track, a piano driven ‘Strange Transformations’ that gives a run for its money in top tune stakes. Using some classic horror movie soundbites and imagery as a metaphor for the streets of the concrete jungle is an inspired move, and the line “You need a silver bullet just to get the bus” is so good it ought to prove immortal.
It would be easy to spend thousands of words going on about all the little things on this record. The shredding and thumping of ‘Polished Chrome and Open Kitchens’. The almost Bowie-esque ‘Floating Away’ (this album’s answer to ‘Until the Sun Comes’. The chaos of ‘The Concrete We’re Trapped Within (It’s Yours’). The sixties-sounding documentary sample that cements the whole thing together. But at the end of the day this is a record that needs to be heard not read about. No doubt you’re aware of the genre-bending Sonic Boom Six is well versed in, but this takes things to another level whilst coherently reeling it all in together and creating a distinctive sound. The musical equivalent of organised chaos? Maybe. Or maybe just SB6 up to its usual tricks. Ultimately it’s hard to do justice to this record with the written word. There’s so much going on and so many nuances that aren’t readily apparent but still manage to seep out and command your attention.
In short, it’s what you’d expect only much bigger, much faster and much more intense. Ordinarily it’s better to give something a longer gestation period but I feel justified in already tagging this as the best SB6 record yet. That ‘yet’ is an important thing as well. As Sonic Boom Six evolves from its early roots it’s safe to say things are just getting better and better. Pending awesome album number four lets simply bask in the big, bad, brash, monstrous beast that is ‘City of Thieves’. Absolutely storming!
Alex