This Is Not the Future

On their often charmless third full-length (their first since being dropped by their label), the Futureheads jilt subtlety in favor of balls-to-the-wall rawk. For listeners who initially found them appealing for their Wire-esque off-kilter approach to pop-punk, all the bludgeoning riffage on This Is Not the World might be a tad overwhelming. It's too bad, because the knack the band once displayed for constructing precisely modulated rave-ups was a rare one, but this record is full of bull-in-a-china-shop posturing.

Oh, Futureheads, why? More at Slant.