Remember those nights when you were a kid, running around in the glory of occasional summer sun, playing footie with all the other kids in your cul de sac or in the local park … only for the ball owner to take their brand new Mitre 5 into the house when their “mummy” called them in for tea… the rest of you; left like a bunch of mugs, sitting outside. You realised then that football was something beyond just entertainment; it was deeply rooted in politics and ugliness.
This is what ‘Football Sundays‘ by The Zang captures. The nostalgia. The good with the bad. It speaks of times in our younger days, painting a story of a sport loaded with passion and the potential to blow up and permeate throughout society, our worst tendencies. It has the potential to turn the great game, into nothing more than a vessel for perpetual children everywhere to stomp their feet and take away the proverbial ball, when they don’t want to play nice with all the other kids anymore. It’s exactly what a tune should do; dose the listener with all the feels.
Above all else, it’s the distinctively Alex Turner esque vocals on display and unusually mature and well-composed lyrics which capture this picture so well, like a Northern Irish answer to an early days Arctic Monkeys still finding their feet and knack for urban fable. Like many of the greats of the last 30 years, heralding from these isles – Oasis, Blur and The Smiths before them, The Zang have endeared themselves with an ability to write great tunes, with words that hang on melody in a way that has the potential to bring them into the collective consciousness. There is a wealth of story and character in Northern Ireland, rife for the taking and primed to allow for this combination of learned sensitivity and bluntness found on this stellar track.
If this anything to go by; exciting things lie ahead.
