Proving vocals, bass & drums can wipe its cock on the curtains of convention after fucking the mistress of bands with guitar: this is awesome. Big Business are the groove based daddies.
A current popular sound in metal is the ‘stoner’ sound. Bands like Queens of the Stone-Age and try-hards Mastodon have somewhat penetrated mainstream consciousness, but I think stoner bands are, by and large, pretty shite. That said, there are exceptions for every unfair generalisation, and this is one such exception: the second album by the who helped make the Melvins (A) Senile Animal one of the best albums of 2006, if not thee best.
Kicking off in fine style with ‘Just As The Day Was Dawning’, the core elements of Here Come the Waterworks are familiar thanks to the aforementioned Melvins albums – hugely distorted bass, driving drums and a vocal sound heavy as it is melodic (there is an odd moment in ‘Ground for Divorce’ where the melody almost ventures into Beatles territory). And, okay, there is the occasional guitar sound but it never features in the fore of a song.
The album just keeps on going for seven tracks – it’s hard to turn off. There’s a hypnotic quality to this album without the usual stoner tendency of over-repetition of a riff and no song outstays its welcome, despite just eight tracks lasting 40 minutes.
The quality of everything on this is blistering: the musicianship (especially the drums), the songs, the riffs, the vocals, the production. The drums punctuating everything, driving every riff, complimenting everything with style. It all just sounds massive and so fucking heavy.
One song melts into another but each one complements the last and the next. You get lost in the album and it’s only when Grounds for Divorce’s odd pre-chorus wakes you up to the fact you’ve been dragged through 4 songs of awesomeness.
Then, ‘Another Forth of July… Ruined’ kicks off with the drums and the sludge which is the bass sound finally draws a bleedingly obvious line to doom metal, although everything on this album is much more interesting than any Doom album I’ve heard.
The last song, “Another Beautiful Day In the Pacific Northwest” see’s the bass at it’s most distorted – like he’s not even plucking the string, just gliding his finger to the note. It feels more of an ambient number, like the end of a disaster film where the sun comes up and civilisation is in ruins but a few people are left to rebuild it. Light relief compared to the destruction and mayhem gone before it, and it’s the most boring part of the film. Bring back the mayhem.
The sound created seems so naturally massive and the riffs so groove laden that it puts to shame most bands that even try to attempt this style. This album proves why the Melvins wanted to swallow up Big Business. It. Is. So. Fucking. Big.
Tuesday, 1 May 2007
Big Business - Here Come The Waterworks
Saturday, 21 April 2007
Thursday, 15 March 2007
Astpai "Corruption Concealed Under Deceptive Slogans"
ROR XII
Rise Or Rust Records
LPCD Review
I find it slightly depressing that bands from completely different parts of the world can sound almost exactly the same. Case in point – a vast majority of hardcore bands.
So when Austrian hardcorers Astpai give a list of “Paint It Black, Kid Dynamite,” etc. on their promo blurb, my expectations weren’t very high. This is not say that the aforementioned bands are bad - far from it - it’s just that the sound is not particularly new and far too many bands try and just follow the example. Hardcore has sounded more or less the same for about 20 odd years now, without changing much and few mould breakers.
On Astapi’s 2nd album, Corruption Concealed under Deceptive Slogans, they do themselves a disservice by trying to rely on lazy comparisons (although the influences are clearly there). The music served up is unmistakably melodic hardcore but it also has a bit more colour to it which is mostly due down willingness to play with song structures, instrumentation and production.
The lead vocals are little more than angry throaty grasps that mostly lack in melody and a punch behind them and that makes them underwhelming at first, but they grow on you, although he does sound like he needs some cough syrup. As they become likeable, the music takes the fore.
Musically it is full of stops and starts, stabs and punctuation: a lot of changes of direction and pace. Some interesting pieces of music are put together. A mix of clichés and innovation – some straight from “Hardcore Punk for Dummies” and some out their own book.
The album opens with the unusual ‘Life of Reflection’. It’s unusual in that the lead guitar plays interesting, strange riffs over the top and this pricks up the ears. The song itself isn’t great; neither is the follower ‘Hands Kept Clean’.
The album takes a slightly poppier and better turn with 3rd track ‘Born as Destined, Locked Up as Forced.’ This is where they really get going: unmistakeably hardcore but it chops and changes, following a spikier and quite pleasing direction. The song builds, high points are reached, restraint is shown and the song structuring kept interesting.
The album continues from there into the quite poppy ‘Paving Ways in Cliché Suits’, which is a pleasing sing-a-long. There are glimpses of pop and hard rock thrown all over (and even drum’n’bass/electronica in ‘Stuck on Repeat’ (forgive me if I miss-genre-ise, I’m not into electronic music)) but made clear in the great ‘Obsession Kills.’ Slipping amongst the hardcore, the new ideas are mixed well and produced intelligently.
It isn’t breaking down any real barriers; it’s just taking the typical melodic hardcore formula and doing slightly more with it than your average band. The affect is enjoyable evolution of the hardcore sound. These are baby steps: taking the sound slightly further than it was but not as far as others. It’s nice to have a slight change from straightforward routine of hardcore every 20 years or so.
Saturday, 10 March 2007
David Lynch "Inland Empire"
David Lynch
Film Review
Inland Empire is an epic 3 hour wank. It was the equivalent to seeing a prog rock band on a jazz wigout - some genius moments, but mostly a pile of horse shite. How the critics loved it so much is beyond me. It was just David Lynch going "oo, look at me. I'm so clever". What a cock. Give me David Cronenberg any day.
To be honest, I always thought Lynch was overrated. Lost Highway was enjoyable, the Straight Story was just about good and I admit I haven't seen much else but he never struck me as an amazing, innovative film maker the press insisted he was. The little darling
I remember Eraserhead. That was one fucked up film, mostly enjoyable for the hair style of the lead. It was okay.
The film, centering on the possible realities of the lead, does have an excellent performance from Laura Dem. And the film certainly does have genius moments: at least 45 minutes of the 3 hours were intense, dark, truly scary and really quite brilliant. The camera and visuals are fantastic, too. The use of colours through the digital cameras is great and innovative. But 45 minutes does not a good 3 hour film make.
Maybe if I had not have spent the last hour wanting to pee but not wanting to miss any chance of “understanding” the plot, it would have been a more enjoyable. But with that said it did go on for 3 hours with no real plot, only bits of lines of story to grasp to and to pretentiously discuss what it was about afterwards.
"I thought it was questioning the reality of Hollywood, under a post-neo-fascist-pre-violent-liberal-hippy-troglodyte-moose-breeding-woodsmans-daughters-sons-point of view." Cock.
The story was made up of 3 or 4 realities, all based around the making of a film of a Polish (I think) folktale and Dems character. The stories, in themselves, are pretty comprehensable but the way one goes to another makes the film more or less unfollowable. The effect of this makes the film look like a stream of conciousness, both film making and script wise. Very little self-editing, very self-gratifying and perhaps purposely thinking “this makes no sense. Excellent!”
Save for a bit of visuals, and around 45 minutes, this is a pretentious waste of time that everybody else will love, mostly because they “don't get it! HA!" Whilst I just sat there thinking I could be in the pub thinking that I could be in the cinema watching a Lynch film for 3 hours.
Sunday, 18 February 2007
My Device - Live @ Grand Central, Brighton (17-02-07)
My Device walk a line between conforming and experimentation. Whilst they are accessible in a modern indie way, with jangly guitars and all other conventions, they are also more violent, innovative and louder than most of the bands that occupy the seem to occupy a similar space.
The gig, celebrating the first release (My Devices’ single Eat Lead) from new label OIB, was very loud. The sound suffered from My Devices impressive, loud and violent drummer, who managed to beat the guitar and bass in the volume war for a majority of the set.
Despite the jangly guitars, My Device do have some good songs and some great moments, but the enjoyment of this set was down to energy and feel rather than the songs. Some moments of interplay, such as an genius drum/bass break in I Was Brave Today (around 1min 40), did still cut through pretty clearly but the guitar sound was too weak to really stand up to the aural abuse the band were trying to deliver. The drums and bass had a very solid sound and did deliver but with the jangly thin guitar sound on top, it was like putting jelly on a brick.
I don’t know how long they played, but they did not over stay their welcome and their sound did not get boring. They were blistering, energetic, sweaty and violent throughout and left the audience neither overindulged nor malnourished.
Thursday, 15 February 2007
Selling The Youth To The Youth
I am as self obsessed as the next person, possibly more as the very existence of this piece of literary flatulence proves that I regard the way I formulate words worthwhile. But this article is not about me, it is about Myspace. That once small, smelly, insignificant little spot on the arse of the internet which has grown to be as worrying, cancerous lump. It does more to insult the intelligence of the users than any one pornographic site or cellulite-based celebrity magazine does. It has gone from strength to strength on the basis of finding ways to encourage people to indulge their ego whilst ignoring what is really going on behind.
The first and most obvious reason to be anti-myspace is the man who owns it and the wider-company it belongs too. Rupert Murdoch is, to some, the devil incarnate and when he buys a company or participates in backing a political candidate (see Hilary Clinton and David Cameron as the current pair of those backed), the natural reaction for a lot of people is to raise one eyebrow, left or right, and question what is wrong with the company/person he is backing. So, when Murdoch bought Myspace for some $580 million, the warning bells went off – what is wrong with this place?
Throughout my childhood, SkyTV was a guilty pleasure for me & my brother but it was a dark cloud over my parents head. Slowly I started to eye Sky and the other News Corp products with a health scepticism. My father was a journalist and to him Rupert Murdoch had ruined the integrity that tabloids once held (and they did hold some integrity at one point) and pissed upon professional journalism, both on TV and in newspapers. His companies make a mockery out of the idea of freedom of the press through the way he controls what and how the news is reported through his TV channels and newspapers.
The Independent newspaper was set up in opposition to The Times for fear that when Murdoch bought it would become a flaccid shadow of its former self. It did. After a massive dispute in 1986, some reluctantly felt compelled to jump ship to the new formed Independent rather than remain with a once proud and now humiliated Times.
But, for all his media outlets, Murdoch felt he was loosing out on a new market called the internet, so he bought Myspace:
‘Young people "don't want to rely on a God-like figure from above to tell them what's important," Mr Murdoch said. “And to carry the religion analogy a bit further, they certainly don't want news presented as gospel. Instead, they want their news on demand, when it works for them. They want control over their media, instead of being controlled by it. They want to question, to probe, to offer a different angle”.’ (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4697671.stm)
But Myspace is far from being a hub of information on demand and even less of a place “to question, to probe, to offer a different angle”. The ability to do such things on Myspace is reliant upon the fact that you, the user, has signed up to it and asked for been invited to receive the angle of information that the informer informs on. This encourages conformity and acceptance. Many other sites, not based on who is registered to them, actually have a more realistic chance of offering diversity of opinion without the author having chosen, to the same extent, the recipients. They have a more realistic chance of offering the ability “to question, to probe, to offer a different angle” because they do not require the reader to have already accepted the views of the author. But myspace is not about questioning and probing anyway, it is about keeping in touch with friends and showing off your ego … isn’t it?
In fact Myspace pages have more in common with a website Homer Simpson creates in Foxs’ (another Murdoch company) The Simpsons in series 13, before he starts to report news. It is a little bit of the web personalised to promote the individuals taste in inane, silly things that they want people to look at except the counter has pictures of the lunatics who wish to be part of your tirade of dancing Jesuses and clock-work teeth.
Everything on there can be done better, more openly, more efficiently, more professionally and without as many restrictions. People can keep in contact with their friends more efficiently through other means. You can keep up to date with the music and film scenes more efficiently with real band webpages and ‘zines, both online and printed as well as in other formats. What these do not offer is the self inflating personal touch so that others can see how you would like to portray yourself.
Everything about Myspace is safe and comfortable in its conformity. What you can do with the space is varied but confined and you still have to have the adverts blaring at you and you have to conform to rules. You still have to act acceptably by standards set by someone else. There is still that “God-like figure from above to tell them what’s important” but now it’s in the guise of an infected nipple called Tom. Moreover the formula of Myspace can easily be manipulated for corporate gains.
The real reason Murdoch bought Myspace for $580 million is that it is a place to explore how to create revenue from online advertising and what markets can be targeted and how they can be targeted; an online test group. The illusion of diversity, discussion and information is, well, an illusion and what lies on top is a more easily built version of Homer’s website and what lies beneath is market research. Myspace is the test group and the target is whoever is signed up. Myspace is a place where Murdoch can find out how to target and manipulate the very smallest group. Yes, it would seem the plan is to sell youth to the youth.
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,6903,1028189,00.html
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/1023-02.htm
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.07/murdoch.html
Sunday, 11 February 2007
Djevara "Third World War: Cast The First Stone"
CD Review
The interestingly named Djevara (pronounced “JEV-UH-RAH” – you have to shout it) play a noisy, intense style of metal that is their own, and a pleasing listen it is, too. The sound seems distinctly British and fits in with a wealth of ‘alt-rock’ bands that never really sit that comfortably in one genre or another (not even the alt-rock genre – easy point of reference because ‘alt’ is such a coverall) and flirt with a multitude. So whilst there is a, dare I say, nu-metal influence this is certainly not nu-metal.
The album comes screaming in with a typical metal machine gun double kicks and vocal chords screamed raw. The same sort of intro made so familiar by the likes of Pantera in The Great Southern Trendkill or Slayer in numerous numbers. It’s a good intro but the band quickly gets funky and makes clear that have a sound of their own.
There is an element of the dreaded nu-metal in this, there is also an element of extreme metal, punk and alt-rock and any other music genre based around a rather heavy sound. A majority of the sound seems to be based around funk metal sound (not as bad as it sounds if you pick the right bands), which may be slightly indebt to Living Colour. This is not to say that they’re a one trick pony or they’re just nicking someone else’s sound. They have a unique sound that is their own but not 100 miles away from familiarity.
The production has a great edgy and intense sound. The album is very loud and bursts with energy. A lot of the edge of the album seems comes from the sound of the vocals – sung for moments, but mostly a stretched scream that has a brilliant sound that might be natural distortion through being recorded too loud. This adds a brilliant edge of the seat, exciting energy to it. The lyrics maybe slightly lost in the production in it but perhaps it was worth it for the sound of them.
The band sound is great, too. The drummer sounds fantastic and the guitar has some interesting but never too-technical moments. A lot of the riffs and the way they’re played suggest that Djevara are perhaps one of the few heavy bands that can play heavy stuff that doesn’t seem horribly cheesy and over-done.
There are a few negatives, as with everything: songs can get a bit lengthy, one or two riffs don’t seem to lead anywhere and the album comes in at 53 minutes and is quite an intense ride so, after a few songs, a bit of a lie down to put some more ambient, relaxing music on is a pleasing an idea.
The, eventually, intense song 600 Years of Your Civilisation and My People Still Live in Poverty is an example of some of the lengthiness of the album. It takes over a minute to get anywhere after the introduction of the initial riff. It is good when it gets going, but it does take over half a minute of some seemingly aimless doodling.
Another problem with the songs being lengthy is that it takes a conscious effort to make sure the later songs get a listening too. The sound is never a relaxing one, either. It’s certainly exciting and energising to listen to yet with some of the aimless light riffage, it feels like some of it could be trimmed to make more of it as instantly enjoyable as the first two or three songs. The first two songs are great, but it calms down a bit after that, which is a shame. I think the whole album would have been brilliant if some fat had been trimmed to make the whole album a sharp experience that finished before the listener really wanted it to, but there is some fat here and it is a bit lengthy. But at least it’s a mostly interesting, worthwhile 54 minutes.
This album can be great listen. An intense, interesting, individualistic band playing their brand of heavy, and feels like it has a point to it. The length of some of it is made up for it by the bulk of the songs and riff. It is good to know there is still be a bit of vibrancy, urgency and inspiration out there.
4/5
Friday, 2 February 2007
The Good, The Bad and The Queen
B000IAZ3E0
Parlophone
CD Review
Damon Albarn is, supposedly, the mastermind behind Blur, the Gorillaz and The Good, The Bad and the Queen (TGTBTQ) and other assorted music projects. There’s no question that his output is massively successful and very listenable.
Blur were brilliant (until Graham Coxon left). The Gorillaz singles are great, great pieces of intelligent pop. His African CD is supposedly fantastic, too. However TGTBTQ is not any of those.
Fun, inviting and modest are not verbs that should be used to describe TGTBTQ. It seems to be the sound like Albarn being overly self indulgent. His versions of whiney-shoe gazing soulless vocals cover the album, whilst a majority of the songs plod on with nowhere to go but exhaust the one or two ideas that stumble into. The whole thing sounds like they are too obsessed with the stitching in their shoes to actually take an interest in what they’re playing.
The lead single, Herculean, was no good: boring, instantly forgettable and drab. You’re hard pushed to recall what the song sounds like after numerous listens, and listening to History Song, the first song on the album; it would seem that Herculean set the tone for this album.
Some songs, such as Nature Springs, sound as if they wish to be chill out drum’n’bass numbers. They don’t quite achieve their desire and end up just annoying, slightly pretentious and a bit sad.
That’s not to say that there are not positive parts of the album. Paul Simonon’s bass delivers a brilliant lesson in dub throughout despite the songs. The bass is constantly the thing to listen out for, rather than the dull plod of the songs above. A lot of the intros and ideas do sound exciting and interesting though, it’s just that the songs themselves are so boring.
That’s not to say that there are not one or two wholly good songs involved. ‘80s Life opens with traditional doo-wop chords (think Blue Moon) and Albarns voice slowly comes charmlessly in with no balls, but a rather sweet melody. The eventual result is a rather bizarre Estuary interpretation of doo-wop, it is an enjoyable number.
Three Changes is more proof that the group are able to produce songs that are enjoyable. It is the first time that Tony Allen’s drums really stand out, and it we even get a bit of a groove by the whole band at the end of the song.
Behind The Sun should have been a great song. Again, Albarns half-arsed vocals do not do the intro a great thing, and the change of direction after around 40 seconds ruins what could have been a good swinging number.
There is a lot of misleading things on the album: the constant banging of the piano, for instance, to make it sound like the song is going to be a fun, jaunty number. It happens in a number of intros but never is the want satisfied. What the intro suggests like a picking up of pace and that something bright is coming; it is all suggested by the intro and all disappointed by the song.
The album can sound like an expansion on the ideas that are found in Blurs single The Universal. Blur cut him off after 1, but he’s found a way to record and sell these plodding fumbles of sound.
Maybe it is just the sound of his voice, slowly whining into the songs. Maybe it all the songs feel like they’re at the same volume and the same tempo all the way through. There are no glorious angry, fast, mid-tempo, humorous sounds to be heard. There is so little variety in the sounds and songs of the album. The songs have all got a very similar plod to them but the saving grace of it all is the bass and the occasional idea.
Thursday, 1 February 2007
NoMeansNo "All Roads Lead To Ausfahrt"
AntAcidAudio
Canadian legends NoMeansNo are back with their 14th (I think) LP outing, All Roads Lead To Ausfahrt. Continuing in their usual array interesting, intense riff laden songs which are sometimes funny, aggressive and epic, but always NoMeansNo. And golly is it good. It’s damn good.
There are no real surprises on this album, mainly because it is extremely hard to know what to expect from NoMeansNo apart from NoMeansNo. There are the usual elements of the songs, riffs and lyrics which are staples of what NoMeansNo are; the brilliantly interplaying, intense, detailed drums and bass, the witty, sometimes insightful and poignant, sometimes just funny and silly, lyrics. There is no worrying about that - that was always going to be there. But the guitar playing of Tom Holliston seems to take on a slightly different dimension to the last LP I heard of theirs. Sometimes, the guitar seems to be on top of the songs, doing similar things that Larry LaLonde of Primus does. Where the drums, bass and vocals are the core, the guitar compliments it all and, what seems to be a variety of guitar effects, help make the songs what they are and helps the band evolve a bit more.
This is not so much of a pop album for NoMeansNo, it seems to be a playful and epic one. The album may contain riffs that are on their more poppy side but the songs are very much epic numbers. This is made wonderfully clear in the second song, In Her Eyes, where the verse riff sounds like something from the Hanson Brothers (NoMeansNo hockey/Ramones obsessed sideproject) but the chorus is very big and very epic.
Another very Hanson Brothers-ish moment is played out in So Low, which really would not sound out of place on any of the Hanson Brothers albums. So Low is probably the most straightforward song on the album, along with Slugs Are Burning (the last official song on the album), and they are in contrast to much of it.
Following So Low, is a brooding, dark, grinding song called Faith that puts you in the middle of the intensity NoMeansNo can poses. Eventually, after four and a bit minutes, it gives way to anther great song, Heaven is the Dust Beneath My Shoes (referred to as Heaven from now on). Heaven is less weighty than Faith but feels equally as epic and intense in a more euphoric, grand way. The two feel like a real journey between two moods of NoMeansNo excel in; from brooding, almost oppressive to euphoric and grand, yet there is always an intense darkness in the background.
Thank god then, for the relatively light feeling of Mondo Nihilissimo 2000 and The Hawk Killed the Punk. The cool looping vocal refrain which matches the cool looping drum beat in Mondo Nihilissimo 2000 is a brilliant, cool piece that sticks in your mind and will stay stuck for a while. And The Hawk Killed the Punk feels like NoMeansNo version of “Voted Off the Island (a Jello Biafra and the Melvins song). They feel like light relief after the depth and epicness of Faith and Heaven.
‘Til I Die feels like the light hearted version of Heaven and it also contains what is the last of a wonderful series of epic choruses. ‘Til I Die and Slugs Are Burning sum up the album brilliantly, with the classic late 90s sound of Slugs Are Burning and the fantastic chorus refrain of ‘Til I Die.
The last song is a hidden song, is a strange nursery rhyme of a song which strange, funny lyrics that is probably the sound of what NoMeansNo would sound like if they become a circus band.
It would be wrong to review a NoMeansNo album and not mention the lyrics. In I See A Mansion In The Sky, the verse takes the vocal rhythm from the tongue twister ‘How Much Wood Could a Wood Chuck …’ They elaborate upon the natural quizzical-ness of the tongue twister to query about postmen, young bucks and more. A lot of the epicness of the songs is added to by the lyrics. Heaven Is The Dust Beneath My Shoes fits the music perfectly, as does Faith, In Her Eyes and ‘Til I Die. I've always wondered if the lyrics or the music comes first to them, neither suffer for the sake of the other.
This is another NoMeansNo album, full of great riffs, epic songs, brilliant vocal melodies and harmonies and brilliant lyrics. It does contain the odd more poppy song but this one seems is more epic and contains a lot of grandeur in both individual moments and songs. For me, this album was not instant but certainly had me putting it on and playing it over and over again. This is NoMeansNo. They are brilliant.
Wednesday, 31 January 2007
King Blues "Under The Fog"
The King Blues have been much hyped around these here parts. Signed to one of the most prominent of the underground UK record labels, Household Name, I gave this a blind chance.
Maybe there is something about them live. Maybe they have a charm that cast a spell on the UK punk rock community. The noise submitted here is an all acoustic folk-ska affair that is not particularly pleasing to the ear and is occasionally rounded off with painfully bad cod-Jamaican accents.
The intro is neither here nor there and the first track, Blood On My Hands, introduces us to the folk-ska with cod-Jamaican accent sound (brings to mind a white Shaggy, anyone?) that will accompany the bland lyricism and lack of inspired songs throughout the album. The sad thing is that they do ska really badly but for some reason that is what they delude themselves to being able to do. Oh, the irony.
There manages to be around three songs with a claim to charm on this album. The first is Mr. Music Man. It’s understandable why Household Name put Mr. Music Man online to promote the album, but that doesn’t make clear why they put out the album in the first place, still it is one of the more reasonably enjoyable numbers from the album. Although it seems to be based on one idea and one vocal hook it still stands out. The next song with charm would be Taking Over. This maybe just because of the deplorable rubbish which is the song that precedes it, Come Fi Di Youth is almost painfully in its audio offensiveness. It brings into the fore the problem which are the lyrics. The song itself is a fairly pleasant sing-a-long ska-folk number, if only it wasn’t for the lyrics! More on that later.The real stand out number is If I had a Coin … and really represents what is wrong with the music on this album, half baked ideas that are never expanded upon. The song itself is a barber shop quartet song, and the verse contains more charm than the rest of the album combined. The chorus just loses its way and ruins it completely, but it’ll still make you want to search out some doo-wop (do so. Doo-wop rules). Instead of introducing some doo-wop into the ska, they’ve just left them completely separate. There is just this complete and total lack of innovativeness anywhere here.
As a whole, the lyrics are all bland and obvious and leave nothing to the imagination. There is nothing to read into and subsequently there is nothing, but the surface material, to take out. They are on par with bad oi bands. Really dumb, really bland lyricism that, instead of saying something poignant and interesting, just leaves nothing to grasp except the very concept that they don’t actually seem to have anything to say. Billy Bragg this is not.
If this album is reflective of the standard the UK scene is accepting from itself at the moment, it is in a dire state of affairs. With most punk bands too bland to mention and most ska bands still trying to find something to come after CapDown and Lightyear and others trying to introduce folk into the proceedings, the scene is dear. This is not a worthwhile album and will only interests people who either like really bad ska (I’m quite scared at the numbers that may) or people who are so desperate to have something to cling onto from the UK, the UK is in rather a depressing lull at the moment.
This is an album full of ideas produced by people who don’t seem able to fulfil any potential of those ideas or talents. They could have been worthwhile but fizzle into blandness. The production leaves much to be desired, as do the main vocals, song writing and lyrics. Despite the lyrics wanting to be a rallying cry for anti-government sentiments, because of the lack of anything distinctly interesting and generally less than annoying in the music, they fizzle out and loose any potency they may have seemed to the poetry-less lyricist. Oh, how this album annoys me, let me count the ways …