Everyone Into Position

Everyone Into Position
Label: Beggars Banquet
Rated: NONE
WorkNameSort: Everyone Into Position

Manchester quintet Oceansize sounds a lot like the punchline to one of those rock-geek “What if …” questions. As in, what if Radiohead decided to do away with those avant-garde, electronic and minimalist bents they’ve had for almost a decade, but held onto their timeless alienated-from-society/globalism/whatever angst? What if, instead, they decided they wanted to rock out … hard? What if they threw out their Autechre and Pink Floyd records and spent a lot of uninterrupted time intently listening to Incubus, Nine Inch Nails and Coldplay instead? These hypotheticals manifest themselves as raging flesh in Everyone Into Position‘s raging-then-eddying-then-raging-again coliseum-sized (and-ready) crunch. Believe it or not, that’s not a putdown. More than ever, our culture needs rousing and popular music that isn’t afraid to express political disaffection but won’t poison the well with gross-out hijinks; godspeed, I say.

This article appears in Feb 8-14, 2006.