Steel Train
Artist: Steel Train 
Label: Indie

After two albums for, and many legal to-ings and fro-ings with California's Drive Thru Records, New Jersey indie-rockers Steel Train return with their first independently released offering. Self-titled, presumably as a defiant line in the sand from their previous travails, this is a creative, inventive piece of work, with much to admire.

Steel Train deal primarily in bombastic indie. Calling to mind, to these ears at least, a more straightforward Arcade Fire, or perhaps more ramshackle Kings of Leon, each of _Steel Train_'s twelve tracks, screams that it is tooled up and ready for radio. Opener “Bullets” judders and jolts into life with the kind of swagger only bands of this type can muster. I can well imagine this as the soundtrack to a driving scene in one of those Hollywood coming-of-age type movies.

Things only get better from there. “Turnpike Ghost,” “You Are Dangerous,” “Children of the 90's (I'm Not the Same),” and “The Speedway Motor Racer's Club” all exhibit anthemia qualities most bands can only dream about, while the sheer sonic ambition and mastery on display is to be applauded.

Sometimes however, this ambition is to the detriment of the most important element of any album, the songs. Many of these tracks contain layer upon layer of melodic invention, which sometimes can be hidden underneath the sheer weight of ideas being tried out here. That said, Steel Train stands as one of the most cohesive albums of 2010 thus far. Certainly it seems as if releasing the album independently has aided the flow of Steel Train's creative juices. Definitely a band to watch in the months and years to come.

Haydon Spenceley