Energise by Shatner By David Thurlby

Self-proclaimed common oiks Shatner are made up of four, thirty-something nearly men from Leeds who should really know better. Fortunately, for our listening delights, they don't. Numerous years on the local music scene have seen these blokes, notably singer-songwriter and chief oik Jim Bower, gain a respectful reputation. A hit among the younger and more media-savvy Leeds Indie pop stars for wry and witty lyrical insights without really puncturing the outer circle of mainstream success.

Energise may therefore struggle to be their breakthrough record but it exudes more than enough charm to assemble some followers from outside of the Yorkshire bubble who are more interested in a piece of lyrical genius than say a tie of purple skinnyness.

The album sleeve declares Shatner as Yesterday's band today - tomorrow and this is probably the best description you are going to get to their sound. They have the knack of combining classic melodica and not so original concepts with futuristic nuances which literally sound like a form of spacecraft roaming the sky.

Or as in the opening moments of the album, what appears to be the aural equivalent of an alien baby opening its quite freakishly large eyes and taking a breath for the first time.

In fact, the subject of the largely untouched galaxies that surround us seems overwhelmingly all over this record at first glance at some of the song titles; Parallel Worlds, Timephone and Its Your Universe. Picking this up in a particularly non-futuristic record store and taking in that band name might lead you to think this is a nasty uncalled for novelty record. Which would almost be, as soul-destroying as discovering a new world full of vacuous wannabe human aliens.

However Jim Bower, and, to a lesser degree on the album, Chris Minz are quite adept at correlating space references with the general emotions and thought processes of life. For instance, in Its Your Universe Bower broods over the perfection of a potential lover in adorable nursery-rhyme sounding verses, ..your friends are moons in orbit around a beautiful planet whilst Parallel Worlds, one of the strongest songs on the album with a glorious prog-riff chorus, hints at an already doomed mission to win the love of a girl rather than exploring some obscure planet that has the average temperature of a burning plane.

Celebrity is a straightforward lambasting of a culture worth revering and sounds like a bloated, pissed Tim Burgess singing a track that was cut from a Blur Parklife-era recording session, yet amazingly it somehow works makes you smile and concur. Quite obviously Bower is not blessed in the vocal department but his musing on the observations of this bizarre world is top-class.

The poor blokes insecurity with women again rears its head in She's Not You whilst thrusting up one of the best lines of the whole album, the description of his fantasy girl as having ..the mind of jezebel, the soul of Ghandi and the body of Kim Basinger. Timephone ends the album in splendid guitar pop style, reminiscent of The Smiths if they were prevalent in the hippy era. A heartfelt message that Love and staying true to the soul are more important in life than any wealth. You don't half get the impression they mean it too.

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