When The Futureheads arrived on the music scene around the same time as contemporaries like Franz Ferdinand and Bloc Party, it seemed that the market was becoming overly flooded with bands that called The Jam and especially Gang of Four influences all at once. All the debut albums by these bands were great, but I certainly wasn't ready for a retread of them anytime soon (yes, I'm talking to you Franz Ferdinand, and your disappointing follow-up!). The Kate Bush cover "Hounds of Love" off of The Futureheads self-titled debut was catchy as sin, but because their big song was indeed a cover, The Futureheads seemed to be well in danger of being forgotten in the Post-Punk year that was 2004.

Fast-forward two years and The Futureheads new album News And Tributes actually shows a band maturing at quite a rapid clip. The Jam and Gang of Four influences are still abound, but traces of early era XTC (musically, lyrically and stylistically) and The English Beat are beginning to elbow in. Not only is the sound of The Futureheads maturing, but so is the content of their songs. News And Tributes features many tracks that coyly deal with the seriousness of relationships and "Back To The Sea" and first single "Skip To The End" are two of the best. The self-titled track even plunges headlong into the tricky topic of the ill-fated 1958 Manchester United football team whose airplane crashed outside of Munich one Winter evening and killed most of the players onboard. Such weighty material couldn't have been expected from these youngsters so soon, but the fact that the sharp contrast of the mature News And Tributes lives up to the youthful exuberance of their self-titled debut shows that The Futureheads may be well on their way to pulling ahead of their other Post-Punk peers.