Talk about sonic soundscapes, aural cathedrals and eerie ethereal beauty usually tends to raise my hackles and remind me of the Manics timely if typically exaggerated advice that the band Slowdive were as bad as Hitler.
So this set me wondering about my fascination with The Resistance.
Is it just the mind-grabbing visuals that make them different from the shoe-gazing bores of yesteryear? These are indeed cunningly crafted film shows, snippets of wars, 'brutality and religion' counter posed against popular culture, working to underline the point that this is not just cleverly pretty music to stare open mouthed, stoned and obedient at, but it also has something it wants to say.
Which is a contrary statement in itself when we are talking about a band with no vocals.
But how does this work on CD, without the images, are we back in the realm of nothing but pretty sounds?
No, I think not.

The Resistance use two guitars, one for feedback and one for noise, and a laptop for drumbeats, sampler and general noisemaker, and are always convey a pulsating urgency, a desire to communicate, a living soul at the heart of their pieces that marks them out from the nothingness of the shoe gazing bands which caused the Manics ire.
'90 Seconds Over Nanterre' is particularly insistent with its driving beat, its droning, feedbacking, thrashing guitar, pulsing 3 note bass line and sampled speeches about the need for resistance in the streets - this must be one of best examples ever of how to communicate without words. Although 'The Baltic Fleet' starts to scare me in its sonic soundscape-ness, 'Hawaii' is also jam packed with ideas as well as sounds to get you to think as well as marvel.
And perhaps also to dance.
To sum up, The Resistance are in fact guitar based dance music with brains, and deserve to have the world dance to their tune.
Apart from Hitler of course.

Richard Rose