The Futureheads are possessed by a rage for order. You can hear it in the band's gleaming, compact songs, which give the impression of a Saab Turbo veering purposefully right at you. Their classic 2004 debut, with its ping-ponging vocal harmonies and rigidly interlocking guitar figures, upped the ante for tight-assedness in U.K. new wave, never the most laid-back of sub-genres, by revving up the speed while clamping down even harder on loose ends. The result was like observing Marine recruits high-step their way through a field full of tires. Or, perhaps a more fitting image for a band that bragged with manic, clipped efficiency about being robots is the little scrubbing-clean droid from Wall-E. Everything was in its right place, goddammit, and woe betide the stray thread that found itself sitting outside the lines.

The personality type capable of this music seldom makes a good party guest, and the Futureheads of 2004 had no time for inefficiencies like politeness: "You thought that I was joking/ When I said you were a moron/ When I said it I was smiling/ That doesn't mean that I was joking," ran a typically charming sentiment. Their following records, the mellower, more nuanced News… read more »