Athlete | ||
| Allmusic Biography : Years before the popular single "Wires" nearly topped the U.K. charts, Athlete was yet another Oasis-styled outfit from South London. Childhood friends Carey Willets (bass), Joel Pott (vocals, guitar), Steve Roberts (drums), and Tim Wanstall (keyboards) formed the group in early 2000, initially modeling their sound after that of the famed Gallagher brothers. Athlete eventually transformed itself into an experimental indie rock act, however, and the bands self-titled EP appeared on Regal Recordings in March 2002. The debut single "Westside" was a quick hit, garnering airplay on BBC Radio 1 and paving the way for another single, "You Got the Style," which cracked the Top 40 in June. Parlophone took notice and promptly signed the musicians, who entered the studio with producer Victor Van Vugt (Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, Beth Orton) in late 2002 to record their first studio LP. Vehicles & Animals marked the bands major-label debut in April 2003, eventually spinning off four singles and garnering the band a prestigious nomination for the Mercury Music Prize. Athletes sophomore effort, Tourist, was an even bigger success. Displaying similarities to Coldplays reflective songwriting, the album rose to the top of the U.K. albums chart upon its release in 2005, with "Wires" peaking at number four and the follow-up single, "Half Light," reaching number 16. Tourist eventually went double platinum, and Athlete toured in support of the record until spring 2006. Upon returning home, the bandmates opted to build a personal studio and remain close to the friends and family theyd left behind on the previous tour. Sessions for Athletes third album began in May 2006, and the self-produced, experimental Beyond the Neighborhood arrived in September 2007. Black Swan appeared two years later, with an American release following in early 2010 courtesy of Original Signal Recordings. | ||
 | Album: 1 of 9 Title: Athlete Released: 2002-03-04 Tracks: 3 Duration: 10:31 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% AlbumCover | 1 Westside (04:01) 2 Dungeness (04:09) 3 One of Those Days (02:20) |
 | Album: 2 of 9 Title: Vehicles & Animals Released: 2003-04-07 Tracks: 12 Duration: 45:44 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify Wikipedia Allmusic AlbumCover | 1 El Salvador (03:25) 2 Westside (04:01) 3 One Million (04:17) 4 Shake Those Windows (05:04) 5 Beautiful (03:47) 6 New Project (03:37) 7 You Got the Style (03:28) 8 Vehicles & Animals (03:52) 9 Out of Nowhere (03:11) 10 Dungeness (04:17) 11 You Know (04:11) 12 Le Casio (02:29) |
| Vehicles & Animals : Allmusic album Review : Apparently damned in its home country for being just a little too much out of time -- the album is not really Brit-pop, per se, but has a certain amiableness about it that suggests a certain love of things from the genres heyday -- Athletes debut is perfectly, almost aggressively pleasant. "You Got the Style" might have been written about race riots in early 21st century Britain, but Athlete is not out to surprise, to disrupt, or to otherwise cause problems, nor are they content to maintain the breezy pace of a "twee" band. If anything, theyre doing something enjoyably relaxed enough that wont make you hate yourself, as the likes of Toploader did all too easily. Vehicles & Animals contains the groups early singles plus more recent efforts, and it generally makes for a great listen on a lazy, warm afternoon -- not party music, but quietly hooky good times. Every so often, something will spark up that makes a bit more sense of the Super Furry Animals and Pavement comparisons that the group received during its infancy -- the shift to electronic percussion and deep bass at the end of "One Million," perhaps, or the flecks of lazy semi-slacker singing from lead figure Joel Pott. Theres enough keyboard bubbling and arrangements throughout that suggest the group might actually benefit from going to that sound full-time, and while hardly reinventing them, the beat songs like "Out of Nowhere" are given a pleasant post-Beck tinge. The band sounds best when it just concentrates on doing what it likes -- "Shake Those Windows" is a winning example, where a low-key enough song suddenly shifts into a summery chorus (thanks to a grand semi-country guitar line) and builds into a sweetly triumphant full-band conclusion. Even the sudden burst of a feedback-laden blast part way through "New Project" doesnt seem like a disruption of the general flow of Vehicles & Animals, and thats to its good. [In America, Vehicles & Animals was released in a deluxe edition with two bonus tracks.] | ||
 | Album: 3 of 9 Title: Tourist Released: 2005-01-31 Tracks: 11 Duration: 46:33 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify Allmusic AlbumCover | 1 Chances (04:52) 2 Half Light (03:42) 3 Tourist (03:58) 4 Trading Air (04:29) 5 Wires (04:20) 6 If I Found Out (05:02) 7 Yesterday Threw Everything at Me (03:47) 8 Street Map (04:40) 9 Modern Mafia (02:46) 10 Twenty Four Hours (05:03) 11 I Love (03:49) |
| Tourist : Allmusic album Review : Its bold to open any album with a languid, string-laden ballad. But its even bolder when your band isnt called Coldplay. Athlete does just that with "Chances" on their sophomore record, Tourist. Its the kind of song England has way too many of in 2005, whether youre talking about the Buffseeds or rushes of blood to the head, but heres Athlete offering it anyway. "Wires" pushes the melancholy even further. Joel Pott sings quietly to his sick infant child, and its moving. But the surging orchestration is so, well, orchestrated that the song becomes a montage of slow-motion dissolves and people hugging meaningfully. "Half Light" imports a few laptop blips from Athletes previous Vehicles & Animals, but its hopeful, chugging-along chorus dates from Britpop circa 1995. "If I Found Out" is much more promising, using that penchant for epic sweep wisely with an assist from a gospel choir and undeniable positivity like "I thank you for soul." "Yesterday Threw Everything at Me" has a pleasant enough chorus, and "Modern Mafia" works with its late-night shuffle and whirring background electronics. Unfortunately, too much of Tourist seems like an amalgam of other things, whether its the Coldplay-ness of their ballads or the distinct Super Furry Animals influence thats been with Athlete all along. Its art direction is a winning tribute to the striking cover art of Britpop past. (Pulps singles come to mind.) But musically, Tourist settles for complacent. | ||
 | Album: 4 of 9 Title: Half Light Released: 2005-04-25 Tracks: 2 Duration: 07:51 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify Wikipedia AlbumCover | 1 Half Light (03:42) 2 I’ve Got a Question (04:09) |
 | Album: 5 of 9 Title: Tokyo Released: 2007 Tracks: 4 Duration: 15:45 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify AlbumCover | 1 Tokyo (live at KOKO) (03:38) 2 Half Light (live at KOKO) (04:01) 3 Vehicles and Animals (live at KOKO) (03:30) 4 Wires (live at KOKO) (04:36) |
 | Album: 6 of 9 Title: Beyond the Neighbourhood Released: 2007-08-27 Tracks: 11 Duration: 45:38 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify Allmusic Wikipedia AlbumCover | 1 In Between 2 States (02:30) 2 Hurricane (03:13) 3 Tokyo (03:34) 4 Airport Disco (05:03) 5 Its Not Your Fault (04:18) 6 The Outsiders (05:22) 7 Flying Over Bus Stops (04:28) 8 Second Hand Stores (05:13) 9 In the Library (03:04) 10 Best Not to Think About It (04:12) 11 This Is What I Sound Like (04:35) |
| Beyond the Neighbourhood : Allmusic album Review : Athlete cant quite manage to figure out what they want or what they are. Their 2003 debut, Vehicles & Animals, was a fun, poppy album that earned Athlete a Mercury prize nomination, but their sophomore effort, Tourist, moved away from the indie feel of their first record toward mainstream and network television-friendly material, and garnered the band a lot of comparisons to Coldplay. For their third record, they continue to explore the brooding, effected-guitar layering that they had previously done, pushing a little bit into the "experimental," with curvaceous instrumental lines, echoing keyboards, and a bit of electronic percussion, but Beyond the Neighbourhood is still very much an album for the mainstream. Its very cleanly produced and nothing ever gets too loud or out of place; even the distorted guitar that introduces "Second Hand Store" is controlled, blended softly into the background and melodically based, lead singer Joel Pott trying his best to find the correct amount of affected quaver and Bono/Chris Martin-inspired sentimentality needed to stir his listeners appropriately. Not that every song here is about love or one of its many guises -- "The Outsiders" contains the lyrics "Lets pick a fight on whoever we like cause were never wrong/Nobody likes us, we dont care, so lets lose ourselves...Can you spot the English here?," while the single "Hurricane" is about, well, hurricanes ("Is it something we gotta get used to?/But were not giving up the coastline so easily") -- but the album is mostly about emotion and expressing emotion, and finding the right driving piano hooks and reverbing guitar chords to enhance such feelings. All of which means that Beyond the Neighbourhood is not particularly extraordinary. This kind of thing has been done before (and as with the case of Coldplay, done better: catchier, more sincere, and seeming less contrived), and reinforces the idea that Athlete are still trying to decide what they want to be, and at this point, three albums in, it may be that they never quite learn what that is. | ||
 | Album: 7 of 9 Title: iTunes Festival: London 2007 Released: 2007-10-29 Tracks: 6 Duration: 30:46 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% AlbumCover | 1 Second Hand Stores (05:06) 2 Airport Disco (05:33) 3 Westside (04:19) 4 Shake Those Windows (05:49) 5 Twenty Four Hours (05:35) 6 Wires (04:24) |
 | Album: 8 of 9 Title: Black Swan Released: 2009-08-24 Tracks: 10 Duration: 44:03 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify Allmusic AlbumCover | 1 Superhuman Touch (03:57) 2 The Getaway (04:32) 3 Black Swan Song (04:48) 4 Don’t Hold Your Breath (04:33) 5 Love Come Rescue (02:52) 6 Light the Way (05:26) 7 The Unknown (04:42) 8 The Awkward Goodbye (03:59) 9 Magical Mistakes (04:43) 10 Rubik’s Cube (04:31) |
| Black Swan : Allmusic album Review : Perhaps it’s no coincidence that “Wires,” Athlete’s highest-charting single to date, is also one of the band’s most subdued tunes. Since the release of Vehicles & Animals in 2003, Athlete has been universally compared to Coldplay, another British band with a penchant for soaring, supersized pop songs. Both groups make albums designed for the Wembley Stadiums and O2 Arenas of the world, but Coldplay does so with more finesse, not to mention a higher degree of commercial success. Athlete has been left to pick up Chris Martin’s crumbs, and it’s only when the band turns down the volume and settles into something different -- a quiet, poignant groove -- that they establish their own identity. The best track on Athlete s fourth album is “Love Come Rescue,” an acoustic ballad that, like “Wires,” sounds significantly quieter than the songs surrounding it. Sparse and haunting, it’s a reminder of the raw talent that exists beneath the band’s swirling guitar riffs and effects pedals. Black Swan still concerns itself with anthems -- there are many of them here, and most are more than four minutes long -- but the track list is broken up by the occasional ballad, and the tracks that do pump up the volume do so with a nuanced, mature approach. Athlete still has work to do in the lyrics department; sentiments like “I’m on fire and nothing’s gonna hold me back” can’t help but sound clichéd when paired with such driving, grand orchestration. Black Swan is a definite sign of progress, though, and the band would do well to follow its path on future releases. | ||
 | Album: 9 of 9 Title: Singles 01-10 Released: 2010-09-27 Tracks: 32 Duration: 2:09:42 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify Allmusic AlbumCover | 1 El Salvador (03:25) 2 Beautiful (03:47) 3 Wires (04:20) 4 Hurricane (03:13) 5 You Got the Style (03:28) 6 Half Light (03:42) 7 Superhuman Touch (03:57) 8 Tourist (03:58) 9 Twenty Four Hours (05:03) 10 The Outsiders (05:22) 11 Black Swan Song (04:48) 12 Tokyo (03:34) 13 The Getaway (04:32) 14 Westside (04:01) 15 Back Track (04:31) 1 A Few Differences (01:57) 2 Stand in the Sun (04:55) 3 Summer Sun (04:45) 4 Loose Change (02:40) 5 You Got the Style (Weevil remix) (03:31) 6 Corner of My Baby’s Eyes (05:10) 7 Hurricaned (dub remix) (03:21) 8 Best Not to Think About It (04:03) 9 Forest Fire (03:33) 10 Accidents Happen (04:14) 11 With You I Never Lose (04:57) 12 Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds (03:34) 13 Wild Wolves (03:02) 14 Lay Your Head (04:56) 15 Shades On (04:37) 16 Never Running Out (04:26) 17 Plain English (04:14) |
| Singles 01-10 : Allmusic album Review : One of the most successful guitar bands of the mid-noughties, London four-piece Athlete have always been far more accepted by the chart-buying public than the harsh and often snobbish music press. Indeed, apart from a Mercury Music Prize nomination for their debut, Vehicles and Animals, they are often subjected to the same kind of derision reserved for fellow unfashionable groups Starsailor, Travis, and Coldplay. Of course, the comparisons sparked by their number one album Tourist arent completely wide of the mark. Top Five single "Wires," the World War Two-inspired "Black Swan Song," and the string-soaked "Twenty Four Hours" are indeed the kind of epic anthemic ballads that Chris Martin is notorious for. However, Singles 01-10, their first retrospective, contains tracks from their four studio albums and reveals them as more adventurous than they are given credit for. Early singles "El Salvador" and "Westside" recall the playful observations of Parklife-era Blur, "Superhuman Touch" and "You Got the Style" are full of swirling synths and squelchy beats, while the downbeat jazz-infected "The Outsiders" wouldnt sound out of place on Radioheads experimental masterpiece OK Computer. Elsewhere, the albums only new composition, "Back Track," is packed with Nintendo-esque electronic bleeps; "Half Light" and "Hurricane" are crunching guitar pop reminiscent of Elbows less grandiose moments, while even the MOR tracks such as "Tourist" are lent an air of distinction, thanks to frontman Joel Potts unusual, elongated vocal style. With sales of their recent output on a downward trajectory, Singles 01-10 is a welcome reminder that Athlete are fully capable of producing melodic and inventive tunes which contradict their rather unflattering "indie bedwetters" reputation. | ||