It is not the big, milestone events that stay in our memories across the many years as much as the swathes of ordinariness that flow between them, so say Cable Street Riot on their latest single, “Everything We Didn’t.” Sure, the big stuff might be what we like to talk about, but in reality it isn’t the big stuff that defines us. They are not the things we muse about in the middle of the night when sleep won’t come; instead, it is those quiet afternoons in good, and perhaps now departed, company, the long conversations with the like-minded, the simple friendships, and the simpler pleasures. And, in hindsight, those are also always the things we wish we had spent more time on.
As they mix their post-punkery with cutting-edge, synthy rock-scapes, their digital tsunamis with low-slung bass brooding, as their spacious rumble builds and goes into overdrive, such regrets are palpable. For all the song’s power, it is reflection and perhaps a quiet melancholy which lingers after the last notes echo out.
And if the “Everything We Didn’t” is lyrically poignant, it is also musically smart. For all its big moves and killer grooves, it is infectious as hell; no trade-off between the cultish and commercial, the indie and the overground; this is music made between pop and a very hard place.
That sweet spot means that it will be rock fans and pop-pickers (at least the more discerning kind), indie-kids and chart aficionados, veterans of the post-punk trenches and fresh-faced post-genre sonic grazers alike who will be all over this even by the time I have written this final sentence…
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