Radio Four are the stragglers at the back of the queue of bands straight out of New York. While their contemporaries have been busy stealing our charts and pillaging our festivals, Radio Four have been looking at their abandoned city and getting very angry indeed.
Radio Four make songs that defy you not to dance, while hitting you over the head with politics. Mixing powerful percussion with passionate appeals against apathy, and sharp guitars with succinct slogans, they have a cosy name but an uncompromising agenda. Imagine Citizen Smith's sentiments sung by a Paul Simon lookalike and set to a heady collision of Clash guitar parts and Prince basslines, and you're getting close to the many-headed beast that is the Radio Four sound.
Not for them style over substance. Or, indeed, any kind of style at all. Anthony Roman, the diminutive singer and bass player, pulls his brown corduroy hat over his eyes and turns Dylan chic into Andy Capp-inspired working-class credibility. Tearing into Our Town, his squelchy bass notes combative against Tommy Williams's shrieking guitar, he begins to sing before the song grinds to an abrupt halt, its echoing keyboard notes hanging in the air. "False alarm," explains percussionist PJ O'Connor, as Roman takes off his guitar and begins the untimely hunt for a replacement.
Once the technical hitches are overcome, Radio Four begin a blistering set of rants. Start a Fire calls attention to the lack of interest in the escalation of Aids, while the spiky but sprawling Struggle is a rallying cry to protest, though at what isn't clear. All subtlety is abandoned in favour of intensity, both lyrical and musical, as Gerard Garone's ominous keyboard drones fail to rise above the chaotic and desperate guitars. O'Connor, however, has more success and almost steals the show from Roman, whose face trembles as though wired up to the mains. Adding menace, energy and good old-fashioned entertainment value, O'Connor shakes maracas, plays bongos and hits his snare drum high and hard, a drumstick jammed in his back pocket as the one he plays with threatens to snap from the force. And he never stops dancing.
The violence and excitement of New York are neatly captured in the buzzing punk melody of New Disco. Roman's yelping vocals are softened by Williams's more nasal, less sure approach, but the aggression never abates and the message all but gets lost in the fight.
