Monster Music & Movies

Reviews:

If you thought that Radio 4 plundered every last morsel from the Gang of Fourvaults with their 2000 debut, The New Song and Dance, guess again. Whilethat album may have been Radio 4's Entertainment!, Gotham!is conversely their Songs of the Free. For if this new Big Apple groupstill seems particularly enamored with the "To Hell With Poverty"spare riff on tracks such as "Calling All Enthusiasts" the stripped-downbass bleat and Euro funk disco of "Speaking in Code" brings back longburied memories of the "I Love a Man in a Uniform" era shade of thearch U.K. agitprop post-punk/funk/dub greats instead. That said, if Radio Fourare still stubbornly going down a parallel scratchy art-punk tribute-band roadas the Strokes, they have the four main, crucial ingredients the latter hyped-to-deathpretty boys distinctly lack: a driving edge, an unstoppable rhythm section,a hypnotic, repetitive drive, and, most of all, songs that catch the ear. Nowif they ever strike out for terrain they can claim all their own.