The Lucky Stars of The Radio Makers

Bristol-based The Radio Makers have laboured over their forthcoming album Lucky Stars (Got My Radio) for four years, and it shows; you’ll find out for yourself how that toil has paid off on its release next Monday, 7th August……

Though decidedly new wave throughout, Lucky Stars begins as if we’re retracing steps from punk to the new wave era. Reverberating vibes of post-punk the album kicks rock straight out at you; Edible Hearts is borderline punk, but the followup, Echoes immediately signifies that change to the new wave movement. We’ve gone from something which wouldn’t look out of place on an eighties Joel Schumacher or Tim Burton soundtrack, to something perhaps more for John Hughes, in just two tunes. Going on this alone, I’m slouching back in my chair in anticipation for a substantial slice of retrospective goodness, and I got it.

Then, Jo-Jo slows the tempo, with subtle hints of goth drone, we’re progressing through the era, with black eyeliner and a bottle of Chinazo, because that’s the only booze the woman we asked outside the off licence would buy for us! Now, if you’ve been there, outcast youth of 88, attired for the Batcave, all is not lost to Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift; Song For Rainy Afternoons perhaps belts out the best hook so far, but by halfway through we’re still plodding on a steady goth tempo. Girl Who Looks Like You surely confirms gothic dominance, sitting comfy somewhere between Killing Joke and Bauhaus. Stands to reason, Lucky Stars is produced by Steve Evansson who has worked with Siouxsie Sioux.

Recorded at EAM and NAM studios in Wiltshire, the Radio Makers describe their album as “songs about love, life and people,” which fits like a glove into the kind of subject matter of the common prose of the genre. By subject, even if ironic, I’m a Poseur chants back into that Bowie glam punk, particularly noticeable on this wonderful bridge and slam back in, if there’s going to be a sing-a-long on this grower, it’s this.

And then the title track comes across as being in the period all these new waves bands realised they needed some more Chinazo and had to aim for chart success. Never could they have dolloped the toilet doings of modern day pop, at the time, but as The Cure developed into the near-acceptable face of goth-rock, this turn in the album suggests to me that it has not been overlooked either. It’s no bad “selling out” type thing, in fact it bought the subgenre crashing a tsunami over the defensible face of new romanticism slush of a mainstream 1986, and for those who may have listened to Duran Duran, were now turning to Joy Division and Sisters of Mercy.

Course, you’ll be totally engulfed by the eighth tune to concern yourself with pigeonholing; I only do it in a best attempt to define a sound, so you’ll have some idea of what you’re getting. Though I often felt like a window-shopper in this general genre, at the time, The Radio Makers is one of those bands which makes you realise the worth of the depths of a epoch, and wish, if you could travel back in time, you’d be leatherman draped in velvet, with fishnet stockings and black painted fingernails! Talk About You, is a perfect example, a drifting ballad finale of precision and skill, and it polishes this moreish album adroitly. 

 A nimble and captivating pilgrimage to an era of yore, with compelling freshness; well played, indeed.

It will be available on CD and 12” vinyl (from The Radio Makers’ BandCamp page) and on all digital platforms. A mini launch tour takes them to Le Pub, Newport – Friday 4th August, Hen and Chicken, Bedminster, Bristol for the official album launch party on Saturday 5th August, with Deadlight Dance in support. Then at the Three Horseshoes, Bradford-on-Avon on Friday 11th August, Bristol HMV, Saturday 12th.

They play Box Rocks Festival at The Queens Head, Box on Monday 28th August, previewed here. Party in the Park, Filton, Bristol on Saturday 16th September, and appear at Bath HMV, on Saturday 23rd September.