Music : Indie : MP3/Variable






Athlete - Singles 01-10 (2CD)(2010)






Athlete are an Ivor Novello Award winning English indie rock band formed in Deptford, London, comprising Joel Pott (lead vocals and guitar), Carey Willetts (bass and backing vocals), Stephen Roberts (drums and backing vocals) and Tim Wanstall (keyboards and backing vocals). Recently, the quartet have recruited Jonny Pilcher of Weevil as a live guitarist.

Friends since the age of fourteen, Athlete took their wide ranging influences such as Grandaddy and The Flaming Lips and started jamming and practicing in the basement of The Bear, a pub which was converted into a church and sandwich bar, on Deptford High Street in 1999. They began recording there, before sending demos out.

The band had a brief period of high-profile domestic success in which their debut album Vehicles and Animals was a platinum seller in 2005 after a 2003 release and Mercury Music Prize nomination, with this followed up by Tourist which reached #1 and sold over 500,000 copies allowing this album to also go platinum. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athlete_%28band%29





Much maligned by critics and connoisseurs alike, Athlete have always been subject to a certain degree of snobbery when it comes to their music. Since the start of their career in 1999, despite a Mercury Music Prize nomination and an Ivor Novello Award in 2006 – or perhaps because of these things – the Deptford quartet have struggled to turn their commercial success into critical acclaim. Instead, after the release of first album, Vehicles & Animals, they found themselves lumped in with the numerous purveyors of British mediocrity – Turin Brakes, Starsailor, Keane et al – and have struggled to break free ever since.

It’s easy to see how that happened. The catchy, hook-filled You’ve Got the Style aside, the three other songs from that first album included on this retrospective – El Salvador, Beautiful and Westside – do little more than confirm Athlete’s place amongst the slurry of dreary indie-pop that the UK seems so fond of producing. These songs are not awful, but do sit quite happily alongside those other bland, middle-of-the-road bands.

Yet, when the band released second album, Tourist, there was a slight shift. They embraced their mainstream, commercially viable status and used it to somehow craft an album that, actually, was a remarkable improvement on their debut. Wires and Tourist, for example, are both fragile lullabies that glow with a previously unheard soulful tenderness. The anthemic torch-bearing of Half Light and Twenty Four Hours might have been aimed for the top of the charts (where this album debuted on its week of release), but there’s nothing wrong with that if it’s done, as it is here, with passion and a sense of integrity.

From their next two albums, the shimmering, spectral, almost Radiohead-esqe lament of The Outsiders stands out on this collection, while Black Swan Song’s gently-plodding balladry is genuinely affecting. On the flipside, though, the disco bounce of Superhuman Touch and the Nintendo musicality of new song Back Track fall flat.

Still, this compilation is evidence that Athlete probably deserve more credit than they often get, that their repertoire is more than just a few diamonds in the rough. They’re certainly not a groundbreaking band, but, as even the second disc of B sides and odds’n’sods demonstrates, their ability to write an uplifting, life-affirming tune is a skill that should not be undermined or overlooked. 
http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/reviews/jb28





Tracklist:

CD1:

01 – El Salvador
02 – Beautiful
03 – Wires
04 – Hurricane
05 – You Got The Style
06 – Half Light
07 – Superhuman Touch
08 – Tourist
09 – Twenty Four Hours
10 – The Outsiders
11 – Black Swan Song
12 – Tokyo
13 – The Getaway
14 – Westside
15 – Back Track

CD2:

01 – A Few Differences
02 – Stand In The Sun
03 – Summer Sun
04 – Loose Change
05 – You Got The Style (Weevil Remix)
06 – Corner Of My Baby’s Eyes
07 – Hurricaned (Dub Mix)
08 – Best Not To Think About It
09 – Forest Fire
10 – Accidents Happen
11 – With You I Never Lose
12 – Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds
13 – Wild Wolves
14 – Lay Your Head
15 – Shades On
16 – Never Running Out
17 – Plain English





More info:



 
http://www.athlete.mu/home






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