We Are The City – Violent

There’s a new Mew album due this spring, but if you can’t wait that long the debut album from Canadian three-piece We Are The City might just tide you over. Unashamedly indebted to the Danish dreamers, Violent is an accomplished freshman work and combines the tender unravelling of Friends Hurt with the harder thump of King David, one of a few numbers that will make you feel like you’ve been pawed by a grizzly bear.

It does however suffer from a lack of the same gravitas that makes other acts that cover the same ground so essential. Violent simply doesn’t stay with you when the final reverb-laden note of Punch My Face ebbs away. A passable 36 minutes but We Are The City have some distance to travel before they’ll be mentioned in the same breath as some of the acts that have inspired them.