Warme's musical influences may be firmly rooted in the oeuvre of British rock history, but for Council House Opera, they broaden their musical style far beyond this green and pleasant land. Drawing on influences such as Oasis, Paul Weller, Radiohead and The Rolling Stones, the Bradford band aim to revive the successful 90s Britpop movement dragging it into the modern age by distancing themselves from the upbeat pop anthems of the carefree 90's and replacing them with a grittier and more melancholic sound to represent today's uneasy world.
Monday Comedown is straight out of the rugged working class environment that gave birth to Blur and Oasis. It's edgy, raw but with a solid soul leading us into the council house operetta. Give It Away starts to speckle in other cultural musical elements that prevent their music being defined as strictly 'British'. Council House Opera, however, is the one exception. It's very much in the vain of classic 90s Britpop, but maintains that heavier, angrier edge thanks to the enhanced growl of the guitars, the dominant drum line. Unfamiliar builds on this theme but it's the outstanding funk based Wheel Of Emotion that is the real surprise on the album. It's dynamic, with some beautifully textured moments, following on from the orchestrations we have heard previously.
Walk On brings the depressive acoustic come down before The Devil's Dandruff, a very working class slang terminology for cocaine, shakes things up in a haze of psychedelic sounds and incoherent chatter, designed to disorientate and confuse. Gimme The Love continues the musical high. Dadgad, a seven-minute opus for the band, is a melting pot of sounds and very Zeppelin inspired. New Man has the feel of The Verve meets Radiohead with Lee Walsh's sombre David Grey style vocals leading the way.
The strong sense of American rock here mixed with a 70s funk percussion is a successful fusion that moves the band's sound into musical diversity rather than just merely rehashing 90s Britpop. The album is so varied in terms style that it becomes hard to quantify exactly where the band sit. In places you can hear the inevitable influences of spin off bands such as Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds; an obvious parallel to draw in the evolution to the 90s genre style, but more often there is a conscious effort to break away from what has gone before and redefine the genre for the new age.