Review by :
Playlouder.com - Iain Moffat

It wasn't supposed to be like this, surely. Winning this year's "Be A New Band And Play At Glastonbury" competition ought to be, by rights, any band's day in the sunshine. Yet here, The Subways are facing what, overnight, seems to have become the wettest Glasto since The Mud Years. Ooh, the lucky buggers, eh?

The Subways have skyrocketed from unknowns to plum spot on Glastonbury's second biggest stage and are one of the must-see new bands of the festival.

Well, actually, those lucky buggers are us, they are. You see, The Subways might be unsigned, but they'll be putting a lot of today's more under-contract bands to shame. Squint a bit and they could be a slightly reduced Sonic Youth. Listen a bit and they could be the band Geffen would've loved Sonic Youth to be.

Frontchap Subway has a fantastic, rasping rush of a voice and a fine way with a twangy slab of new wave, Frontchapess Subway has more of a grungey cool and an abundance of lovely, lewd bass, and between them they've got the same crackly chemistry that makes The Kills such a valuable live proposition. They've also got several sheds full of stunning tunes, including one that's pretty much their very own 'Teenage Kicks', several that have got a hefty chunk of Ash sprinkled over them, and one, the cheekily inspired 'Mary', that's genuinely amazing.

In fact, it's all so impressive that they could comfortably be higher up the bill, playing to the kind of enormous crowd they should start getting used to, since this, clearly, looks like the first real talking point of the day and an eventual were-you-there affair.

"You're so cool!" they sing, "You're so Rock'n'Roll!"

No, Subways, that honour is all yours.