Union Jackals ‘Spaceship Dream’

With the Eighties electro revival doing its best to be the new rock and roll, it’s nice to know some people are well ahead of the curve when it comes to the next revival. Stepping admirably up to the plate are London’s very fine Union Jackals with their bid to make the psych rock, post punk, shoegaze, electronic meanderings, prog stylings, classic guitar pop revival their very own.

It’s always interesting to see the kind of pals people like to pick as their front of house MySpace friends. Try Mark Gardener (the former Ride frontman who they’ve recently recorded a clutch of new songs with), Super Furry Animals, Flaming Lips and The House of Love for this lot, and if that doesn’t build a hatstand to hang the cap of where they’re coming from musically before your very eyes, we know a good optician. He can probably wash your ears out too, but only if you ask nicely. Lap it up, it’s got a dash of everything from XTC to The Charlatans,

There’s a couple of names in the Union Jackals line-up that sad people like me will recognise immediately – Stephen Barnes was mildly well-known at the height of the whole shoegaze thing as frontman of Lamacq’s favourite ever band, Thousand Yard Stare, and Paul Reeves was probably more famous in the NME office during his time as clever internet person than he was a guitar player in Paris Motel. But don’t let that put you off – forget the girth, feel the quality, which perhaps isn’t quite a saying, but it probably should be.

More hear…
- This lot aren’t shy in coming forwards, there’s the industry standard MS, an actual real-life website, a bit more music on the old last.fm and bit of Facebook action just to make sure no one is missing out.
- There’s a debut single featuring two tracks – ‘Analogue Star’ and ‘Out Of Control’ – and you can get that from iTunes, should the mood take you.
- And if you like your bands with pictures, there’s a nice video for ‘Analogue Star’ here too.