Hundred Reasons

Run as you might, you can never escape who you really are. Well, not unless you’re Surrey’s Britrock survivors Hundred Reasons, whose fourth album finds them sounding, variously, like Franz Ferdinand, Idlewild and Super Furry Animals. Strange, eh? Recorded in Latvia, this unfortunately named collection is still just about recognisable as the thud-happy, earnest former champions of post-hardcore, but not much. And, after last year’s muddy ‘Kill Your Own’, it’s a victorious creative reboot. ‘Sick Little Masquerade’’s slender art-rock sounds as different from pretty piano sketch ‘Pernavas Iela’ is as it’s possible to, which in turn is as different as that is from clockwork cyber-slash-em-up ‘The Shredder’. Not quite a Biffy Clyro-scale reinvention, but still a ferocious step back to relevance from a band we’d all but given up on.

Dan Martin

7 out of 10