Side Effects

A veritable tsunami of dance grooves, heavy guitar textures, dream pop melodies, and celebratory wordplay, Skylab expertly emerges as direct descendent of the Madchester explosion, tracing their proud aural lineage to the Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, and Charlatans UK. Though the lads punctuate the arrangements with scattered electronic samples, this is a big British guitar band, pure and simple. The hooks, neo-psychedelic harmonies, and whirling counterpoint are deftly executed and composed as they hit their mark on every cut. Not surprisingly, youth is the dominating subject matter. Lyrics of ecstasy, misplaced sorrows, love lost, love found, love unrequited, experiencing the rush from hearing great songs playing on the radio, and just about every extreme emotion that runs through the mind of an adolescent on the cusp of adulthood are afforded center stage. Vocalist Roger Gisborne is a heartbreaker, effortlessly hitting falsetto phrases with soulful leaps and bounds. To the uninitiated, this collection sounds like a greatest-hits album (i.e., absolutely no filler). On Side Effects, Skylab scales the heights of modern Brit-pop.