Rip Offs and Off Cuts

Here are some old music reviews of mine that I have rescued from an old defunct site that noone reads so that they can be here on this new site that no one reads.

Artist: The Coral
Album: Nightfreak and The Sons Of Becker
Released 2004 on Deltasonic
It’s hard to complain about any album with songs as good as Don’t Think You’re The First, Bill McCai and Pass it On and with The Coral’s second album Magic and Medicine that was just the tip of the Iceberg. Even so, Magic and Medicine seemed restrained in comparison to the band’s self titled debut. Apparently filled with a sudden desire to be taken seriously, the band kept their sparkling pop tunes but lost some of the energy and eccentricity that made their debut so distinctive. Now The Coral return with a limited edition mini album that they wrote and recorded in a week and the good news is oddness is definitely back on the agenda.
Tracks such as Migraine and I Forgot My Brain are like Captain Beefheart’s little brother after too many E numbers. The slower numbers are dark and warped and there are sampled voices and strange sounds all over the place. The songwriting has matured fast since the band’s debut. They open strongly with Precious Eyes and don’t let up. Highlights are the would-be single The Sorrow or The Song, a relaxed groove called Grey Harpoon that recalls Eminem’s The Real Slim Shady and a gorgeous music hall pastiche tucked away at the end called Lover’s Paradise. The latter is peppered with the crackle of old vinyl as if to persuade the audience (or perhaps themselves) "It’s ok to like this old fashioned stuff, we’re only messing about" but the song is so good in its own right you wonder why they bother.
As you’d expect from such a rushed album there are some tracks here that lack substance. Still, even filler like Why Does the Sun Come Up? And Auntie’s Operation are full of energy and ideas. The Coral’s lyrics aren’t negatively affected by the speedy writing but then front man James Skelly is usually spouting nonsense anyway. In fact the lyrics here are better, certainly funnier, than the ones on their last "proper" album. This record is the sound of a band really enjoying itself, enjoying sound for its own sake without getting sloppy or pretentious. As a result it’s just as fun to listen to as it obviously was to make. The record sounds as fresh as the songs really are and at the lean half-hour this record leaves you no time to get bored. Without losing their unpredictability The Coral have made, perhaps by accident, what is possibly their most cohesive album yet. Which only raises the question why don’t more bands make albums at this speed? Get hold of a copy of this record while you can!


Blur-Thinktank
Blur's latest album arrived amid mass speculation and nervous anticipation. Are the group falling apart? Have they turned into a dance/world music act? Can they cut it without Graham? And What on Earth is Fatboy Slim doing on this record?
Firstly, while this record is a departure for Blur you can rest assured they won't be appearing on a Ministry of Sound compilation any time soon. These are still "proper" songs which won't be played in Ibiza or the superclubs but work as well as ever on your home stereo. Secondly, good news! It's a pretty good album!
This albums strength lies in it's melodies. While Graham's departure has meant an inevitable shift away from guitars, for the most part the new sounds don't distract from the tunes. The much hyped world music influence is used to flavour the songs, with shonky rhythm tracks and eastern strings. They enhance and support the gentle melodies rather than distract from them as on Lead single Out Of Time.
Opener Ambulance sounds eeriley like something off David Bowie's Heathen album. If you liked that you'll enjoy this track, if not you wont. With it's saxaphone assisted space jazz leanings it's a strong start but not typical of the album. Sweet Song is accurately titled, the albums sweetest melody. The heart melting music hits its peak when joined by what sounds like the worlds most mournful kettle. Norman Cook's contribution is limited to two tracks. Gene by Gene is a bouncy, squeaky number which recalls Combat Rock era Clash and It's great, the other,Crazy Beat is less so. It's the one moment when you can hear the band striving to sound commercial. As a result it falls flat, too eager to please amongst more confident fare. It's one of a few clunkers that let the album down.
Brothers and Sisters is a lazy, ill concieved drugs rant and Morroccan Revolutionary Bowls Club is a none too subtle anti war message."If We go and blow it up then we will disappear". Neither has a tune to speak of. Jet's is more interesting but at six and a half minutes it'll test your attention span.
The albums best track is saved to the end. Graham makes his only appearence on the achingly sad Battery in Your Leg. A reminder of what's been lost,It combines a Doleful guitar riff with poigniant lyrics to great effect.
Think Tank is a very good album of beautiful tunes to rival Coldplay. It finds itself held back from true greatness by weak lyrics and the odd thrown together track along the way, but all in all Blur have been rejuvinated. They aren't any worse without Graham, only different.


Kings of Leon-Youth and Young Manhood
In the TV ad for this album one of the kings mumbles "We're about a mile from anything you own". It has to be said that that's not strictly true. In fact to dub Kings of Leon The Southern-Fried Strokes wouldn't be too wide of the mark! They are also indebted to the Stones at their country-rockinest and there's evidence they've given the "Almost Famous" soundtrack a couple of spins (on vinyl no doubt).
Not that there's anything wrong with wearing your influences on your musical sleeve. You only need hear the first two Oasis records to know that. The Strokes themselves work wonders with their stew of The Velvets, Television and The Smiths. Unfortunately, the Kings lack both the bite and energy of their heroes. As a whole their debut is sluggish and wont stand repeated plays.
The album does have its moments. Opener Red Morning Light gets things off to a flying start and California Waiting finds the bags of energy they apparently mislaid while recording the rest. Molly's Chambers is the standout, arriving on a propulsive drumbeat it practically bursts from the speakers. At the other end of the spectrum plodding ballad O Dusty recalls Stones Stinker Faraway Eyes but without its tongue firmly in cheek as on the Rolling Stones track. The rest of the tracks fall into a sort of middle ground. Nothing here is unlistenable, but neither will it hold your attention.
Maybe if the Kings can survive the hype they'll eventually make a great album. Til then Steer clear! If the singles have attracted you to this then either hold out for the new Strokes LP or go out and buy some records that were really made in the seventies. I'd write more but with such an overhyped album turning out to be so poor a longer review would be a waste of your time and mine!


Athlete- Vehicles and Animals
A little over a year ago, when Nelly was ruling MTV and British radio with Hot in Herre, or however he spells it, discerning music fans might have noticed another act equally capable of producing pop gold from complaints about the temperature. "Hey, it's getting hot in here,must be something in the atmosphere" was the chorus to You've Got The Style, the most upbeat song about race riots ever. It was cool, it was catchy, it was sunny and positive. Predictably, it was also trounced in the charts by Nelly's offering, getting practically ignored in fact. Now after a long wait and a couple more singles Athlete the band behind the track finally have a whole album out!
As soon as the fuzzy intro to El Salvidor arrives to open the album the tone is set. This track is cheery enough to bring a cheesy grin to the faces of statues. Even if it does nick its tune from Avril Lavigne's Complicated of all songs! This is an album of positive, upbeat tunes for listening to in the garden or at the beach, all summery harmonies, bleeping keyboards and strummed guitar. Highlights include the retro squelchy synth laden Dungeness and the quietly sad New Project which suddenly and unexpectedly breaks into frantic riffing halfway through. The anthemic title track no doubt provokes mass arm waving and swaying when played live. On closer Le Casio the band really do use the tackiest Casio Keyboard noises available to them which ends up sounding as stupidly brilliant as you'd expect.
Athlete aren't the hardest rocking band in the world but that hasn't stopped Coldplay and Travis making a name for themselves and this album is a lot more interesting sonically than the most recent efforts from either of those bands. This is pretty, melodic music to make you smile. Like an overfriendly labradour Athlete seemingly just want to be loved. This of course would make them very easy to hate if the tunes weren't there but they are! By the Bucketful!
Ultimately though the formula begins to wear thin over the length of an album. Most of the songs lack emotional depth and some tracks, like the dull One Million, are Athlete by numbers. Not a good sign so early in a career! You Got The Style is the best thing here and they struggle to maintain that level of effortless cool. It's a promising debut though, and well worth the money if you can stand a bit of wear on your skip button.


Mclusky-Mclusky Do Dallas
This album has been around since April 2002 but unfortunately the Hook hasn't so I hope you wont mind if we're playing catch up a little here. It's just that Mclusky are an exciting Welsh rock trio and those are hard to find since The Manics got stuck in compilation hell and Stereophonics started rationing themselves to one good song per album! In fact ignore "Welsh" and "trio" finding any rock band as explosively visceral as this who can bring pop hooks to their noise is reason enough to get excited!
McClusky deal in heavy, noisy punk rock. Increasingly in recent years the word Punk has come to mean either teenage-bedroom angst set to power chords or worse, jokes about "Boobies" and bodily functions. Not so here as the band bring genuine anger and frustration to their music and unlike their fashionable American contemporys are much more than a diluted Greenday. In fact, the band Mclusky owe the biggest debt to is the Pixies with their screamed vocals and nerve shredding guitar. It's comes as no suprise that Pixies producer and legendary noisenik Steve Albini is on desk duties here. They also lace their distorted rock with lyrics that have actually had some thought put into them. As a result these lyrics are consistently funnier than anything in the Blink 182 or Sum 41 back catalogues. In fact they are funnier than pretty much anything since Pulp released Different Class.
Unfortunately, also unlike the aforementioned bands, Mclusky aren't exactly commercial. Despite their way with a vocal hook and slightly wayward pop smarts the music is just too noisy and heavy to conquer charts. This doesn't stop the band railing against their lack of success however. Judging by some of the songs here they seem to be suprised that CD:UK haven't invited them on. On Whoyouknow the lead singerand guitarist(known only as Falkous in the sleevenotes) spits "Selling out is down to oppurtunity", "obscurity is not a fucking badge". On Collagen Rock he takes out his bile on bands who've hit the big time. "It's easy to say now their trainers seemed fine and their hair was a fucking delight!" Elsewhere the lyrics are hilariously bitchy, straddling both cutting commentary as on The World Loves Us and is Our Bitch or surreal nonsense. For example "I'm fearful, I'm fearful, I'm fearful of flying and flying is fearful of me!"-Lightsabre Cocksucking Blues.
For an album that rocks so hard and so cosistently it's interesting that the album highlight is its one change of pace. The sarky, self depreciating Fuck This Band is slow, quiet and even delightfully hummable. "Fuck this Band" runs the lyric "Cos They Swear too much/ it's an obvious ploy/ and irresponsible", fantastic! Gareth Brown Says and moody closer Whoyouknow run it close though!
Mclusky Do Dallas is a far from perfect album. Several tracks here flirt with tuneless mediocrety. when they hit their mark however, as on the barnstorming punk funk of To Hell with Good Intentions, you'll be hard pressed to find wittier, harder rocking music released since!


Prince-N.E.W.S.
Prince has been giving his music jazz flourishes since the early '90s with mixed results. Now here is Prince's full blown Jazz Instrumentals album! If that doesn't imediatly appeal to you then you'd have a point. These days however, Prince doesn't have to worry about such concerns as commerciality. He knows the hardcore will pay through the nose to get this through his website. As for the rest of us? It seems he doesn't much care anymore. This isn't nessessarily a bad thing though. For an artist as gifted and intelligent as Prince such artistic freedom invites potentially exciting experiments and the chance create an entertaining listening experience. So actually listening to a new album by Prince these days invites a mixture of anticipation and dread. Will it be an avant garde masterpeice or a load of pretentious twaddle every bit as appetising as a shit sandwich?
Instead of songs N.E.W.S. is divided into four 14 minute tracks(Called North, East, West and South. Can you see what he did there?). Apparently intent on proving himself artistically Prince has abandoned all his tradtional strengths. This album isn't funky, it doesn't rock, there are to real tunes. We dont get to hear his voice once over the entire 56 minutes.
North is tediously dull. The music is always skillfully played but this the most noodlesome, pretentious Jazz that doesn't begin to capture the energy of the genre. Without any hooks, funk or soul to it you begin to wonder really what's the point? This music is neither catchy and upbeat or smooth and relaxing. East starts promisingly with what sounds like a snake charmer's pipe and some energised drumming before descending into more of the same dross with a few splashes of funk rock guitar.
West is a big improvement. With soothing guitar and keyboards it could be acceptably labelled as classy chillout. That is until halfway through when it reverts to the albums previous rubbishy standard. The Best thing that can be said about South, which is YET MORE noodling, is that when it's playing you know the album is on its final quarter and wont last much longer!
This album is anything but an enjoyable listen, the only possible use for it is as lift muzak. Or the soundtrack to some experimental dance maybe. If you are a Prince fan then you may want to follow this with a listen to Rurple Rain or Sign O' The Times to remind yourself why you liked him in the first place. You'll get no clues from N.E.W.S.