Singles

This Et Al - Sabbatical

James McDonald 12/06/2006

Rating: 4/5

If I wanted to start a band and steal some riffs and lines, these would be the guys I'd take them from. Leeds/Bradford based 4 piece This Et Al formed in late 2002, and have since appeared on MTV2, at last years Leeds Festival, and have been clocking up numerous plays on Radio 1, with Steve Lemacq counting himself as a fan. They also produced a split EP with a little known band called Forward Russia. Now they hope to take things further with the release of their first widely available single, “Sabbatical”.

Background information aside, the song itself is a tangled maze of heartache and pain, wrapped in a fragile box of controlled anger, with frontman “Wu” delivering likes like “Who can you be if you're not her?” with perfect aplomb. “Sabbatical” tip-toes along with such haunting vocals and Editors style guitar noise before embarking on a fuck-off big chorus. And I really am talking big. Kind of like the sound you get when you fight a bulldozer with a chainsaw, maybe.

This Et Al take all the best aspects of bands like Placebo, Editors and Yourcodenameis: Milo, polish it off with their own charismatic and soon to be unmistakable sound, and release it as a single on June 12th. Good for them.