It's impossible to believe, even while watching & listening to UK band The Subways tear through their first-ever show in New York City at the sold-out Bowery Ballroom, that there are only three people on stage.
There was another three-piece that more than ten years ago sounded this big, this fast, this tight, this important, this Next Big Thing: Nirvana.
Yeah, I said it. Freals. And it's absolutely no exaggeration. The Subways are the first band that channels Nirvana's sound, but owns it outright and doesn't ape them. Think of the emotional rawness of Bleach then imagine if Cobain & Co. played their instruments as well as they did on In Utero, and you'd have Young For Eternity, The Subways' debut album.
The guitar riffs and rock-and-roll howls are big-Nirvana, but The Subways lyrically downshift away from that band's cancer-eating, zeitgeisty angst: they don't have the weight of the world on their shoulders. They sing about sitting on the "City Pavement" with their friends, the demon boy meets devil girl of "One AM," or the I-Only-Want-To-Be-With-You of "Holiday."
They rock (so hard) like Nirvana, but lead guitar/vocals Billy Lunn also sounds like another band you may have heard of: Oasis. These two bands are among Billy's admitted and obvious influences, and the album oscillates effortlessly between dreamy tidal pop, rave-up ditties, and the Rock. But if the best artists steal, then The Subways are Grand Theft Auto.
They took the stage at 11PM, less than a week into their first US tour. They want to duplicate their wild UK success, and opening the show with "With You" leaves zero doubt that they will. Within moments Lunn is on the drums; not playing them, but climbing & launching from atop them with a perfectly executed rock-and-roll leap. For the rest of the show he can't stay off the furniture, and you know that there is no out-of-bounds in the venue.
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