Tellison - Contact! Contact! (Reissued Album Review)
Thursday, 29 November 2012
Written by Ben Bland
With the best will in the world, Tellison are never going to be big. You can just tell. Bands that are as good as they are at spiky, hooky alt-rock generally fall into three categories. They either get lucky and get big really fast, get big after somebody at a major label realises they could be made to look really cool on telly or remain acclaimed and loved by many but never break through into the mainstream due to a lack of the ‘cool factor’. Tellison sit very much in the last of those categories. The fact that they are awesome at what they do is neither here nor there. None of them can regularly be seen sporting red chinos, and that is what the currency of the British music scene seemingly is these days.
Thankfully though, despite the harsh unfairness of the world we live in, Tellison are still with us and the fact that they are reissuing their debut record, 'Contact! Contact!' to remind us how good they are just before Christmas, is a jolly nice thing for them to do.
Five years on, these songs are just as infectious as they were upon release and it genuinely becomes only more puzzling with time why Tellison were not at least catapulted to the mid-tier as a result. In many ways, this is probably more an album defined by the passion put into it than any particularly spectacular music, but that is what rock music should be about sometimes. Tellison are living proof that you don’t have to be desperately original to produce songs that really matter.
The likes of 'Hanover Start Clapping', 'Gallery' and 'Ambulance' have now aged to perfection, with a remaster only serving to boost their lovability, and are so damn ace if they fail to get you screaming your lungs out within a good couple of listens then your ears have clearly stopped functioning correctly. With 'The Wages of Fear' from last year making a fantastic follow-up, some may have forgotten about 'Contact! Contact!' Some newer fans may be yet to discover its charms. With this re-release there is no excuse not to stick it on your stereo and fall in love with one of the UK’s very finest rock bands.
'Contact! Contact! (5th Year Anniversary)' is out on Monday via Naim Edge. It comes with bonus tracks and another CD featuring a remix album.
Tellison will also be playing the record in full at the following intimate shows:
Nov 29th - Bristol, The Old Bookshop
Nov 30th - Oxford, Truck Records
Dec 1st - Brighton, Electric (Bring your own Booze)
Let’s party like it’s 2007 all over again.
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Thankfully though, despite the harsh unfairness of the world we live in, Tellison are still with us and the fact that they are reissuing their debut record, 'Contact! Contact!' to remind us how good they are just before Christmas, is a jolly nice thing for them to do. 
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