Album Review: The Rifles - 'Love Your Neighbour'
The Rifles long anticipated return delivers a nostalgia and maturity that demonstrates why this band are respected industry veterans.
The album fires off with the lead single from the record ‘The Kids Won’t Stop’ and it’s the perfect way to begin proceedings, as in some ways it summarises the record as a whole, not just lyrically but also with the energy it provides. It’s a track that wouldn’t sound out of place on any Rifles album, and with the opening line of “life used to be easy, we had time to dream and time to dare” feels like a statement of nostalgia for where the band are and where they’ve been. The band have also said that it’s a song about the constant business of life itself. Both this song and the album itself reflects a world full of constant engagement, with social media and the ideologies of a perfect world that sites like instagram create, and the pressure that this creates to all generations.
Frontman Joel Stoker has also said that “‘Love Your Neighbour is saying we’re all in this big old mess together and it would be good to get along a bit more and enjoy it. Talk to people more, help each other out when you can, say good morning and maybe take your head away from your phone for 5 minutes and appreciate the people standing next to you. I’d like to think that the record captures life's daily situations that we all come across, all wrapped up in 3 minute bundles that you can sing along to.”
This hope of positivity rings throughout each track. This rings especially true in the track ‘All Aboard’. The Rifles have always had this ability of delivering earworms that engage right from the first lyric, whilst combining upbeat instrumentals with sadder more hard hitting topics, and this track really captures that. If you heard this track as an instrumental, you would believe that this song could be about sunshine and rainbows, but the song provides lyrics such as “Cause they say that it’s coming real soon So sit back, and wait for the boom, There’s people with radical views, Radical plans making radical news” It’s an art within itself which makes the listener really engage with these topics from a different perspective.
As expected with a Rifles record, the album does provide some slower moments. ‘Venus’ presents a heartfelt moment on the confusion of love, and sometimes, trying to understand the situation of a relationship can feel a little bit alien. ‘There Is My Heart’ strips back the feelings of love to its fundamentals. “The gentle hand in a hand of another, a song to sing you to sleep”. This track shows the songwriting experience of the band building up a pre-chorus to then bring it back down for a chorus that summarises the song. A skill that is achieved with years of songwriting, and confidence in your abilities. “Out For The Weekend” is just an outright Rifles classic, with that classic crescendo and fast paced chorus, with the song being about letting loose on the weekend to escape the mundane rat race. A topic which Rifles have a long discography of exploring throughout their career.
It was worth the wait for this record, as The Rifles have released this at the perfect time. In a world full of social negativity, and insecurity, the band have delivered a record which strips back the principles of everyday life to its core, and reminds us of the fundamentals that we should carry with us in everyday life.
Words by Doug Dewdney
