Athlete -- Vehicles And Animals

Athlete is the quintessential British alt-rock band from the early 2000's. This album captures exactly the feel of this time: a kind of uneasiness about the future, and a grasping in the dark for one's own identity. It's almost as if the members of Athlete looked at each other and said, "We're survived the '90's. Now what?"

It's things like the shouted "CHORUS!" in "Westside" before the actual chorus: intentional jabs at their own formula which take away from the atmosphere and instead add to their aesthetic. It's postmodern, and it works.

The lyrics are often vague: The phrase "It was just one of those things" in "One Million" left me kind of cold, especially since it was repeated so many times. Some tracks verge on boring. "Shake Those Windows" takes no risks, and is probably the most uninteresting track on this album.

To me, the album started out promising with the boppy "El Salvador" and then transitioned into more of already-done alt-music tropes (like the ending feedback in "Beautiful" and the theremin, which seems to pop up randomly). It then picked up speed with the happy "You Got The Style", which seems to carry the rest of the album on its back. The band really found its own sound with "Vehicles And Animals", the title track. From then on, Athlete sounds less like an Arctic Monkeys garage copy and more like their own project.

RELEASE DATE: April 7, 2003
LABEL: Parlophone
RUN TIME: 46 min
TOP TWO TRACKS: "El Salvador", "You Got The Style"
GRADE: B-
FINAL COMMENTS: Dream-like British tunes which verge on same-y sounds. This is good background music. The album really finds itself after "You Got The Style".