At what point does the post-punk revival become the post-post-punk revival? Or the post-punk revival revival even? It’s been a long time since the likes of Interpol, Bloc Party and the rest revived the genre in the early 2000s, and the sound got another shot in the arm from the likes of Idles, Fontaines D.C. and Dry Cleaning only five years or so ago. At this point, the sound of rumbling dub basslines, haunted vocals and wiry punk rock doesn’t seem as though it’s going anywhere, rather it’s an established, key element of modern guitar music.
Which brings us to Crows. The London quartet have been releasing music since 2015 and have evolved from the garagey indie rock beginnings of debut single Pray, through the driving melodic hardcore and choppy Joy Division-isms mash-up of 2022’s excellent Beware Believers, into a third album which grasps tightly onto the established tropes of post-punk.
To say that Reason Enough is a grand reinvention of their sound wouldn’t be accurate, but it’s certainly the most melodic, hook-filled and accessible sounding record of their career thus far. Or, to put it more bluntly, they now sound a hell of a lot like Interpol.
Whether that’s a good thing very much depends on your viewpoint. If your glass is half-empty, you may demand that any record associated with a genre that was specifically birthed to radically reinvent punk rock took a few more risks. Alternatively, you can remind yourself that many of the artists that defined this sound have either split up or haven’t made a record with songs anywhere near as good as the ones you hear on Reason Enough.
Because, frankly, each of the 10 tracks here are great. The album's first single Bored is a glorious robo-punk rager with vocalist James Cox doing his best John Lydon in PiL sneer, Land of the Rose is all Stephen Morris drums, chiming guitars and baroque, Ian Curtis-meets-Morrissey vocal inflections, and Living On My Knees is fantastically catchy, despite essentially being a classic, dark, gothic downer of a song with a sprinkle of feedback drenched, Sonic Youth style noise rock.
The best song on the album though, is final track D-Gent, which is where Crows nail the entirety of post-punk in one song. With a chiming, spiralling guitar, a dubby, dragging bass, distorted disco drums and a haunted melodic hook that will drawl deep inside your subconscious, it’s a brilliant way to close an always engaging record.
Reason Enough is certainly not a boundary pushing album, but post-punk has long since been revived anyway, so just bask in the finest set of songs that Crows have yet written.
