At Night we Live

In 1999 Far were my favourite band I'd never heard.

I wish I'd know the guttural honesty of Johna Matranga and his coterie - their riffage and emotional opulence was hidden in a world where the Internet was only a mellow cat on grandma's lap.

More than a decade after the ego-stroking bullshit of the School Certificate here is At Night We Live. I came to Matranga before I arrived at Far and the shock of the difference is only now surmountable. Onelinedrawing was confronting emo proven mostly by Matranga's wail and the weird electronic blips from his R2-D2.

Deafening couldn't start more ironically or with a greater cliche. But sometimes it's worth noting cliches only get that way for a reason. The tick and the tock followed by Matranga whispering "it's deafening" and then drums, guitars, whatever else is lying around locking in behind it - I don't care, I love it and always will.

The meat's further on.

The riffs of Dear Enemy might be from the latest White Stripes album if they went through a different pedal. But with a double kick, flaying percussion and Shaun Lopez threading through it all it is unmistakable, Far has returned and are just as good as they ever were.

Added on to the end for a slice of fun is the wonderful Ginuwine cover, Pony.

Fight song 16, 233,241 would have worked brilliantly in that lobby fight scene from The Matrix. "This is what we do" screams Matranga over a rhythmic beast riding with synths in the back. It's the kind of radio rock that never was, I wish it had of. How much more pure the airwaves would have been for a boy living not far enough from the outback.

The Ghost That Kept On Haunting is the slow, aching work of a band that knows it mines a narrow niche. It's a sign of what might be if Far bothered to do more, to break the rules and experiment. It is all that's needed. Snapping 1-2-1 high-hat and wall-of-slowly-building-sound with Matranga surely drowned by it all.
Synth crushes with rhythm and Lopez lets the riffs bleed for an age, envisaging some sort of post polar world where there is no weather or white - only a blue grey of some sort of trap.

The secret track is the old and wonderfully ridiculous cover of Ginuwine's Pony where Lopez effortlessly plays the tempest to Matranga's seduction. Some of Matranga's most startling work has been cover's. His work on No Ordinary Love with Deftones comes to mind.

Pony is a little nod to the history of a band that needed the lay-off for a thousand reasons but never really stopped.