t was always going to be uneasy, mixing pump-it-up party lyrics with post-hardcore, so Welsh band The Blackout are a challenging prospect. The title track in particular displays a total disjuncture in mood between upbeat cliché (“let’s get moving”) and suddenly menacing whisper (“let’s paint this town tonight”). This band likes themes: the theme for their last album was ‘hope’ – more promising than ‘party’, or P.A.R.T.Y. (yes, they actually did that). I’ll confess that I’m longing for this band to embrace their heavier side; better, darker things may be lurking under the P.A.R.T.Y. exterior. In the middle territory, more screaming suggests that it will all descend into anarchic chaos. It doesn’t. Greater harmonic sophistication would be welcome on ‘Keep Singing’ and the plodding ‘You’ – both are songs with potential, but neither quite makes it. ‘Free Yourself’ – beginning “We are the wasted…” – initially, one suspects, will never free itself, but eventually achieves greater fluency and coherence. Though ‘Start the Party’ is obviously intended to be the album’s anthem and signature, the more heartfelt ‘Running Scared’ more successfully blends accessibility and expressivity.The record is carefully constructed: mainstream tracks frame the heavy meat in the middle, while the desperation-tinted postscript ‘Throw It All Away’, which is more assured than much of the rest of the album, is perfectly placed as a sort of bonus track (“All the good stories are gone,” it finally confesses, finally suggesting a deeper reason for the meaninglessness of the whole). Wasted teenagers will probably best enjoy this live and drunken, before they’re old enough to realise how very insincere it all sounds.
TWO STARS
