Bridge And Tunnel - The Great Outdoors - March 2003

I remember my first experience of Bridge & Tunnel. Reading 2001. They were on early, on the Carling Stage [the little one with the bands no-one has heard of]. I approached with apprehension, and left with something akin to wonder. And then promptly forgot about them for a year and a half, until this little gem came around and dusted the cobwebs off a weekend's worth of muddy, sun-scorched memories.

Bridge & Tunnel sound like the should-have-been soundtrack to every movie that's ever sent shivers down your spine. This record sings of mid-western protagonists in broken shoes wandering pensively down lonely US highways, with birds of prey silhouetted against moody sunsets. It's a record about dark alleyways and speeding cars and every set-piece that you ever remembered watching James Dean or River Phoenix leaning against, up on the silver screen in long-forgotten movies. It's cavernous and chilly and sways with ill-starred, drunken elegance and abandoned, desolate majesty. It's really really good.

As a record it's fragmented and manages to reach in several different directions, but the individual tracks maintain tunnel-vision focus. Nothing sounds off, there's nothing extraneous. If it didn't need to be there, it ain't there. They've recruited two new members, and added some hefty guitar dimensions to their previously electronic sound; at one point it summons the stern sonic thunder of Tool; at other points it uses the languorously ominous trappings of Mogwai. One of the standout tracks, "Dave's Big Score", is a deadpan, anecdotal alt-country tale of wayward adolescent lovers, made classic by lines like "School was a non-event / but weekends were full of joy / Father passed out by six / and Dave was there by eight", and propelled by a curling, melodic guitar lick and rumbling, woeful vocals. It's hard to pin down what makes it so arresting, but when you find yourself putting the damn thing on repeat play so you can figure out the lyrics, you know it's got something.

At other points it recalls the darkly jaunty grooves of The Jesus & Mary Chain - "Her Bright Eyes" is a twisted, leering take on their droning, noise-heavy back catalogue, and "City Rules" saunters along with the same fags-n-booze-n-attitude-drenched glory, but unlike recent imitators Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, it's got fuck all to do with the look, or what musical shards they've salvaged from the wreckage of the Mary Chain - "City Rules" just has "it", the x-factor that made you smile the first time you heard J&MC's "Head On". As songs go it's cocky as fuck; Bridge & Tunnel've got nothing to prove because they know full well that two lines into the song your shoulders will be rolling and your mouth twitching in a grin you can't restrain, provoked by the sheer joyful release in hearing this kinda thing done so fucking well again after a decade of clueless imitators. And it has a really kickass serial-killer drill-bit of a riff right in the middle. You can't go wrong really.

Sadly the chances are no-one'll hear it. Bridge and Tunnel are great, but the evidence would suggest they've been being great in various forms for a fair while now, and few people have thus far given a fuck. I saw them once and forgot about them for a year and a half, didn't I? It's not the kind of brilliance that imprints itself indelibly on your brain, forcing you to hunt down their records until you know every musical facet of the band. Perhaps somewhat fittingly, considering their cinematic sound, they're like a movie you see on BBC2 at 1am on a Saturday night, the kind of film that glues you to the screen and leaves you muttering agitatedly for a couple of days afterwards, before you go back to work, get on with your routine and forget all about it. But maybe, just maybe, two or three years later, after you'd grudgingly dismissed it as a small-hours myth concocted by your brain in the absence of enough sleep, you'll spot it in HMV's £4.99 video sale, and pick it up with glowing eyes and feverish hands. And maybe while you're there, you'll nip downstairs to the rock&pop section and add "The Great Outdoors" to your pile of purchases, and give it one uninterrupted weekend of your life. And when the weekend's up, keep it somewhere you can see it... don't let yourself forget about it.