HAUS083
CD Review
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 …
1.5/5
No comments:
Post a Comment