Review by :
Musical Chairs

The Garden City Comes Up Roses.

On the outskirts of Welwyn Garden City there is a small warehouse where overworked, underpaid agency staff pack hands free mobile phone kits into blister packs. They are not allowed to sit down and they are not allowed to talk. A sixty-minute tape of chart hits fills the space left by the silence, and is endlessly repeated throughout the day. Work stops briefly at lunch when a stripper rubs his leopard skin pants covered crotch in the face of a birthday celebrating supervisor. While that place is as close as it comes to hell in Welwyn Garden City, The Subways are as close to heaven as it gets.

Voraciously ripping through the set at Roadrunner speed, every song builds on the brilliance of the previous one. There is no time to catch your breath or even sip a drink as The Subways hurl punk tinged blues riffs at indie rock and roll, combining all in a musically explosive volcano.

This musical volcano explodes into power tinged indie pop which, according to other reviews, is a mixture of The White Stripes and a young Sonic Youth. Here at Musical Chairs we don’t really do comparisons but can say that they are much better than those other reviews would have you believe. They are fresh and powerfully alive. If you want to compare them to anything, compare them to the greatest band you have ever seen because they are.

On stage for no more than half an hour, it is half an hour of excellence. Away from the formulaic "we’ll have appallingly bad hair, not wash and not care" attitude of too many bands to mention, The Subways surpass indie chic and enter a new world, a world of indie haute couture. They care about what they wear and they wear it well. Looking at them you know that they were the coolest kids at school and at their local mall. With the first single "1am" out on the 20th of September, they are all set to be the coolest band in the world.