"Gushing. That’s what I miss these days. Gushing. The ability, the passion to gush. The Playwrights then, and Good beneath the Radar. Gushworthy? Crushworthy, even? Well goddammit, yes. And yes. And yes a third time just for the hell of it. Actually, thinking about it, of course that ought to be “an enormous Yes!” Just like ole man Larkin wrote about ole man Bechet, except wasn’t it Young Man Bechet he was writing about? I don’t remember. Anyway, here come the young men… The Playwrights look like the Subway Sect. Sort of. Granted, they don’t have the grey school jumpers, and they don’t hold their guitars as high, but hell, that’s hardly the point. The point is that the Playwrights understand the importance of uniform, know the value of adding razor wire edges to Pop. Like the Sect, the Playwrights are instinctive, intelligent and incendiary, are smart, serious and scathing. What more do you want fer chrissakes? Because I am old, the Playwrights remind me of so many great bands from my past. So as well as the Subway Sect, I’m reminded of the Wolfhounds, and that’s a mighty fine thing to say, and believe me I don’t say it often because really the Wolfhounds made some of the greatest records ever. But it’s warranted, because the Playwrights conjure the same notions of fabulously oscillating guitars meshing in dynamic directions, all of them strangely headed straight for the stars. The Playwrights also have the good sense to occasionally punctuate those swirls of guitars with bursts of horns that recall for fleeting moments Lora Logic at her energetic youthful peak and assorted other instrumentation that marks them out as marvellous post-modern purveyors of Pop that prickles" - Tangents

“Wacky duo emerge from ‘lab with new conceptual boffin rock formula to create debut album on par with Lennon and McCartney in terms of greatness.
Bet that got your attention, several truisms it’s fair to say, the Playwrights, if this was applied in art terms, would be Jackson Pollock of pop, mainly for their unusual yet apparent casualness for adding what at first appear to be ill fitting and contrastingly uncomfortable textures side by side that only make sense to the viewer at the finish.
Sink and Stove the small Bristol label really ought to be visited by the Monopolies Commission not content to deliver up one of the finest pastoral albums to drop our way in many a year with Gravenhurst, they also had the guile to release one of the defining albums of 2001 courtesy of Morning Star. Such wilful hogging of talent may be seen as greedy by some and fortuitous by others. Now add to the list The Playwrights who with their debut ‘Good Beneath the Radar’ have come from nowhere to lead from the front and dare I say at distance from the current contemporary scene that seems to be longing for the halcyon days of post punk nostalgia.
The Playwrights court with a curious brand of angular, sometimes abrasive but memorably stirring intellectual pop that is cut from the same cloth that paraded the Gang of Four and Wire to us all those years ago. ‘Good beneath the radar’ if anything reveals a song writing partnership that are not afraid to tinker and mix with an extended palette those draws from many distinctly formulaic genres, once thought impossible bed fellows, beneath all the erstwhile art rock subtleties, seemingly irregular punk mentality and math rock pretensions, which incidentally they coast through with memorable ease, the duo have a serious sense for a hook laden pop melody. ‘Good beneath the radar’ is packed to the brim with intricately developed melodies. Opening with the yearning languor of ‘Human beings enjoy the winter’ reminiscent of the sweetly autumnal sounds of L’Augmentation being dabbled softly by the Francophile nuances of a thoughtful Stereolab, it’s delicate doe eyed pallor is quickly overtaken by the stutter dynamics of the edgy ‘We are the stuffed men’ with it’s disjointed regale of noodling signatures being routed by the occasional burst of urgent pop. ‘Television in other cities’ the current single built over a repetitive riff sucks you in with its mesmeric glare and stinging chord junctures.
‘Trapped in the orbit of a satellite town’ is stirring stuff, recalling in the main Left Hand’s debut album ‘Minus 8’, it’s a starkly austere composition that chills the blood with the kind of icy coating not experienced since Ultravox’s pre Midge Ure album ‘Ha Ha Ha’, uncompromising stuff. There are several tasty tracks on offer, but they don’t really get much better than the sorrowful ‘The National Missing Person’ a wistful eulogy that just batters the senses with a sense of weary reality, very much recalling the melodic finesse of Archer Prewitt, the sparring between the cheerfully courting tuneage at odds with the muted message is the kind of pop chemistry never ventured since the Smiths classic ‘Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now’.
Similarly ‘Bernard’s Dream’ ghosts around the senses imbibing the same rustic charm as evoked by early Micro Disney compositions, a singular cornet crooning amid the beautified wilderness to lonesome hearts. Then there’s the rampant zigzagging stutter clicks of ‘Sleepwalking Report’ all replete with guiding siren guitars and feelings of ominous intent. ‘Keeler Squared’ initially comes out of the starting blocks sounding like the Monkees, a real chameleon of track, incorporating unstable white funk scores and welding them to complicated math rock formulas while all the time maintaining a serious toe tapping pop soul. ‘House for an Art Lover’ probably gives the game away in the title, psuedo art rock emerges from the unfolding tense layers that appears to have an abstract attitude to conformity with it’s almost dogmatic tendency to keep going off in tangents without any fair warning, mark under classic Killing Joke. Ending with the ‘Theme Decade’ a reprise version of ‘The Me Decade’ found elsewhere is something that just deserves time and space to work it’s magic and serves as a neat concluding point.
An essential release it has to be said, implausible but impossible to live without now put that in ya pipe and smoke it and don’t come crying when they are massive.” - Losing Today

"Based around the duo of Aaron Dewey and Benjamin Shillabeer, The Playwrights are a stylish sounding new pop band from Bristol. That’s the pop that Pavement are celebrated for, and not the Idol or Rival type. Drawing on a range of instruments that include woodwind and string arrangements they drive an edgy musical bargain. ‘Television In Other Cities’ is a bleak post-punk effort that seems to pay homage to and damn TV in equal measure. Fans of a cerebral as well as soulful experience from their stereo will enjoy this record immensely. 7/10." - Rocksound

"A new Bristol seven-piece, The Playwrights cannily use keyboards, strings, brass and weird contraptions to create fine art-pop that, unlike many current US bands, does more than just rehash the early 80’s. They offer and angular, accessible, essentially English rock-pop sound well worth investigating." - The Independent

"Ah, it's like summer's here already. The clocks have gone forward, it's daylight when I get home from work, and the Playwrights album feels like a beautiful day in the park. The sun is up, the clouds aren't threatening rain and the music - perhaps a mix of Gastr Del Sol, Brian Wilson and, maybe Miles Davis washes over you, drawing you into the Playwrights world. The guitars chime together, the horns and keyboards provide the hooks and Aaron Dewey's voice soars over the top. As much as I don't want to be responsible for kicking a new genre into life, this could be the beginning of the pastoral post-folk revolution. If nothing else, 'Good Beneath The Radar' is the perfect antidote to the nasty garage rock that's still flying around. So just lie back, close your eyes and think of the Playwrights." - Careless Talk Costs Lives

"It’s no surprise that the core of The Playwrights, Aaron Dewey and Benjamin Shillabeer, were invited to assist Eels / Giant Sand / PJ Harvey producer / collaborator John Parish on the road recently, as well as appearing on his LOGO-approved ‘How Animals Move’ album last year. Theirs is a vision simultaneously Anglican and catholic, introspective and all encompassing, big picture and micro-detail, and this debut captures their essence succinctly: hymnal one minute, raucous the next. If pushed for references, Tortoise, Mission Of Burma and Parish himself spring to mind, but truly these are mere signposts; the essence of ‘Good Beneath The Radar’ is its very unpredictability, veering from the wide-eyed wonder of The Flaming Lips to the spare beauty of Low. It’s a beautiful freak." - Logo Magazine

"At last the debut album from the art-pop combo. Imagine shifting, shuddering guitar riffs, maintaining a constant atmosphere more edgy than a Sunday roast round Saddam's; streaks of mood-enhancing cello, glockenspiel, trumpet, theremin... The lyrics read like a Reuters ticker tape gone barmy: bleak, bitter utterances about viruses, pixels, contellations, pistols and newspaper headlines, rescused by preciousness by lines of almost Morrissey-esque angst. The rewarding density and contrariness here means that on more than one occassion, you wonder if Michael Nyman's nipped in begging for help. Big and clever - 4/5." - Venue Magazine

"Do you have to make angry music to express anger? Do you have to make disgusting music to frame your disgust? The Playwrights have anger and disgust in buckets and communicate it via warm, cerebral avant guitar-pop. Like their forebears XTC, Talking Heads and Wire, they take the emotional content of their songs and force them through a cognitive blender, take two steps back and write a song about standing in the kitchen, as though the raw emotions are just too disturbing to express directly. Benjamin Shillabeer writes the words, and Aaron Dewey sings them, adding an extra layer of misdirection. Dewey sounds like a beautiful, emotionally rebellious robot, chanting lyrics cut and pasted from government information pamphlets and company reports, the Auditor who secretly writes Romantic poetry in board meetings.
'Good Beneath the Radar' has more ideas in one song than most bands have on their entire bookshelves. 'The Me Decade' is a plea for authentic thought and emotion; 'Television In Other Cities' is total dislocation in 3 and a half minutes of buoyant pop genius. 'Trapped In the Orbit of a Satellite Town' is single of the year, whether it gets released or not, a desperate realisation that 'there's a national grid waiting to be lit of people like me', and they all feel like they're missing out on something by not living in London, despite hating the fucking place. 'Sleepwalking Report' speaks to any artist or musician scraping by in an alienating office job, forced to have an opinion on Fame Academy whilst having not actually seen it because they spent every night this week in the backroom of a pub watching real bands make real music their co-workers will never understand. So we're elitists, right? Or maybe we just care more. How come they don't see that THIS is pop music?
In the world of the Playwrights, the sublime and the idiotic coalesce in a delirious urban dreamscape filled with circular bureaucracy, vacuous media coverage of stupid people and desperate middle-managers lost on beaches. If you look at stupid things for long enough they become funny. If you laugh for long enough you become hysterical. Hysteria leads to madness, and madness lies down with genius. You know which way you're going but you're too scared to move.
Remember the smell of that Casio keyboard you got for Christmas in 1985? More powerful than whatever you saw on TV last week." - Choke