Single Review
Dead Freights
Blitzed Town Bop
DL
Out Now
Dan O’Farrell embraces the hometown malevolence of the new Dead Freights’ single, as he just happens to be from the same city.
Sooner or later, it feels, all songwriters feel the urge to try to encapsulate their home-town in song (I speak from experience – my ‘Southampton Southampton’ song still gets me in trouble on a regular basis). If you come from somewhere ‘cool’ and ‘happening’, you can write a ‘Penny Lane’, ‘Strawberry Fields’ or, lord help us, ‘Fog On The Tyne’. If you come from one of the world’s less viscerally-exciting districts, however, your tune is going to end up couched more in frustration, disappointment and anger than those other heart-warming paeans. ‘Blitzed-Town Bop’, by Southampton’s awesome Dead Freights, falls very much in the latter category.
I’ve loved ‘The Freights’ since I first saw them: callow youths in RAF jackets playing an unlikely indie-night gig at Southampton’s ‘The Brook’ venue – usually a home for tribute acts and superannuated stars on the come-back/reunion trail. They had a spiky, Libertines-esque energy, but also a really interesting jazz-chord-laden take on indie-guitar pop. In those days the band were focused on the lead-vocal harmonies of a seriously talented twin front-men: Charlie James and Rob Franklin, early-20’s heart-throbs with a ‘Carl and Pete’ dynamic and stage-presence for which to die.
Over the intervening years, Rob Franklin assumed a lead-guitarist role and then left altogether, whilst the band worked through a few different line-ups – bass-players and lead-guitarists came and went – but always remained eminently watchable, their shows forever vital, urgent and worth anyone’s time of a cold November evening.
Several Libertine’s support tours later, and now signed to Lib’s drummer Gary Powell’s label, 2025 finds the band stripped down to a 3-piece. Charismatic and poet-waif-wired, Charlie James remains front and centre, but still backed – spiritually, physically, emotionally and harmoniously – by the band’s other surviving founder-member – the multi-talented Louis Duarte on drums, as well as the hardest-rocking bass-player on the circuit – Brogan Turner. Musical-chops are hard to praise without sounding like a pre-punk aesthete, but these bastards can play, and play hard. (Any doubters should check out Charlie and Louis’ covers-band side-hustle – The Stingrayys – my ears are still recovering from their deconstructions of ‘Don’t You Want Me?’)
Recording-wise, it feels like Dead Freights have finally found their mojo, and ‘Blitzed-Town Bop’ is an excellent calling card for their darkly original take on modern indie-guitar-rock. The track kicks off with a pounding Duarte rhythm, before Charlie Jame’s snarling lyric kicks-in, referencing ships and anchors, lemonade, lager and murdering eyes. It’s a ‘Cull Britannia’, full of ‘’adda boys encouraged to fuck be ruckus’. I’ve been to these pubs…
Dead Freights have grown into a dark, malevolent sound which gives their long-standing pop-smarts a sinister and decisive edge. There’s the kind of riffage that Josh Homme coaxed out of the Arctic Monkeys during the ‘Suck It and See’ sessions, but no Alex Turner-style whimsy to leaven the scare-factor, James’ lyrics are vitriolic poetry, no quarter asked or given. It’s a heady mix – raw and in-your-face. We’re left head-banging to ‘Shit City Rock, Blitzed Town Bop’…it’s all we’ve got left.
And Southampton? It gets the kicking it deserves, but laced with the loathsome love that underlies everyone’s bittersweet feeling towards their hometown, warts and all. All together: ‘Hello stranger and goodbye love’…
The video is fun too, and captures something of the wildness of a busy Freights’ show: despite the malevolence, there is true fun to be had here. Can’t wait for the album. (‘Little Death Project’ follows sometime in 2026)
Follow the Dead Freights here
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All words by Dan O’Farrell. More writing by Dan can be found at his author’s archive. Dan is also on Instagram as @DOF_AND_THE_DIFFERENCE_ENGINE
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