An irredeemably poor week for releases, this, so let’s hurtle through it like a noisome, grotty, ‘rock n roll train’…
AC/DC – Rock N Roll Train *
I feel totally unqualified to talk about this sort of music, but then I feel totally mystified as to why the hell AC/DC are releasing new music at all. This single doesn’t enlighten me. This is far too bloated, pedestrian, one-dimensional…the guitars chop and splurge, the drums thump on heterosexually – musically, it’s inoffensive. But the constipated squeal of his voice alone is enough to damn this record.
Keane – The Lovers Are Losing **
Can I be controversial and claim to love Keane? It’d be original enough. Frankly, no, but I can at least flag up something that’s very, very unfair. Kings Of Leon spend their last two albums trying to sound exactly like U2, and are feted and adored for it. Keane do the same thing here, but far better, in that they actually sound so ridiculously like U2 in the 1990s that you think Bono’s practicing ventriloquism with his hand up Tom Chaplin’s arse. Apart from that, the second line of the chorus is quite nice and sounds more like Delays. If it weren’t that my father once bumped into Chaplin practicing his swing on the driving range, I’d admit to liking this song.
Fall Out Boy – I Don’t Care **
The intro has that chugging, raunchy beat favoured by Kasabian and Kylie (remember ‘2 Hearts’?) So this is jolly emo then. Yes indeed. ‘The best of us can find happiness in misery.’ Happiness and a lucrative musical career, it seems. The chorus starts like really bad Green Day, but ends in an altogether more sophisticate place. The lyrics veer from the contorted and spoilt to the mildly interesting. Obviously, I can’t stand this band. But the song’s not bad at all.
Girls Aloud – The Promise ***
This should be brilliant. This time, pop’s most consistent sonic innovators capture something simultaneously eternal and really retro. It’s glitzy, cinematic, and does that thing with a minor 4th chord that screams vintage class. The hook is giddy and impulsive; the strings giggle and flirt in the background with assured, macho brass. It takes a little too long to get going, but once it gets into its stride, this is truly swoonsome. But it only gets three stars, since the key change three and a half minutes in is unforgivably clumsy. Where’s their attention to detail gone?
Top of the Ox: Local Tune of the Week
You’ve probably heard of Borderville, but they’ve sort of been away and come back this year. So I may as well mention them again now their sure path to success seems to have meandered somewhat. They’ve got a new bass player and new songs, and I can’t make up my mind whether ‘Lover I’m Finally Through’ or ‘Silence and Violence’ is better. These two, now playing on their myspace, thus compete for tune of the week; a motley brace of urchin-folk songs that sound like a travelling circus pitched up outside a Victorian music hall. Their energy, eclecticism and way with a swashbuckling melody recall folk pioneers Bellowhead, but these tunes have a ragged ferocity all their own.
