The Rifles

Freedom Run review

We’ve always liked The Rifles. There’s always been something reassuringly masculine about them. Like a tea-dunked digestive. A chunky, winter cardigan. Or a last-ditch, clear-the-stands Tony Adams tackle. Their first two albums – No Love Left and Great Escape – were brilliant blasts of Weller-stamped rock that caused us to raise aloft our beers, slap a wandering tramp round the shoulders then gleefully dunk a 50 pence piece into his muddied McDonalds cup.

So, when we first stumbled upon new single, ‘Tangled Up In Love’ we were concerned. It had strings, we didn’t recognise half the band and Joel’s hairline was now seemingly higher than the moon. They didn’t look or sound like The Rifles, and the supposed ‘rebirth’ of the band seemed to have produced a bemused, sickly child. So what has happened? Well, basically, the long and short of it is that the boys have decided to ditch all the Oasis-aping stuff and do something a bit different. And actually – after our first shocked playback – it really rather works. 

Who-style intros and Beatles guitar have replaced the Jam and Gallagher assaults of old, paving the way for some lush instrumentals and quite beautiful rock lullabies. ‘Nothing Matters’ is a haunting, multi-layered beast of a song, ‘Sweetest Thing’ is all Delays-esque loveliness, ‘Falling’ is a Pinball Wizard for the Broken Britain generation, and that initially far-too-tangled single, we’ve decided, is a bold, orchestral belter.

Quite how the new sound will go down with the Stella-ed up Rifles crowd of old remains to be seen, but for the non-Mod-obsessed, non-shop-looting masses among us, it works just as wonderfully as the old, scintillating stuff.

Freedom Run is out on 19 September