Breaking Standing by Forward Russia

Here's a track review for This Is Fake DIY. I'm never sure whether to persist with the band's artistic vision and type iForward, Russia! but, to be honest, I think it's a little unnecessary. Instead, I'll go straight and keep bands on a level typographic playing field.

Leeds cottage industrialists Forward Russia have DIY artrock credentials and an interesting approach to typography. Yes, they’ve ditched the numbers and started using proper song titles. With words and all that. As titles go, Breaking Standing is a curious mixture of two continuous present verbs that is either a striking, poetic image or a pretentious nothing.
Lead single from sophomore album Life Processes, Breaking Standing is a muted fanfare to announce the band’s new material. Emerging from an icy expanse of juddering guitars, it sounds more like their Soviet-influenced contemporaries Bloc Party than ever before. Produced by Seattle-based Matt Bayles (who has previously worked with grunge deities Pearl Jam and Soundgarden), there is a near dehumanised gloss to the recording similar to Gang of Four. Perhaps, like their Leeds predecessors, this is another device to emphasise the artifice of the creative process.
For this new, sleeker direction, Forward Russia are focusing on the human body. ‘The bruises on the inside of your face, those pummelled blanches showed through your translucent skin’ coos singer Tom Woodhead. Yes, coos. He spent much of the band’s 2006 debut Give Me a Wall in a yelping hissy fit, but his vocal histrionics have been calmed.Overall, Breaking Standing is a recognisable yet more rational Forward Russia. It is not until the three and a half minute mark that Breaking Standing reaches a brief climactic barrage of angular guitars then swiftly disappears with Tom’s sighed ‘forever…’ Forward Russia have ordered their chaos, and sound all the wiser for doing so.