Detroit Social Club: Existence | CD review

If Detroit Social Club – from Tyneside, not Motor City – are a bit like Kasabian fronted by Richard Ashcroft, then Northern Man is their Bittersweet Symphony moment. Drenched in strings the size of Led Zeppelin's Kashmir, it's a gigantic anthem about an ordinary bloke looking for answers, man, which seems destined to storm Glastonbury in June. DSC are never quite as unashamedly epic again, but Prophecy contains the contractual amount of shouts of "come on". Like Ashcroft, vocalist David Burn's stadium-aiming passion occasionally leaves him prone to quasi-mystical guff about "shining like stars" and concluding that we're all just floatin' around the universe, guv. But while Existence never shakes off a sense of deja vu, fans of the Verve, Kasabian, and the Courteeners won't have too many grumbles.