Polydor (label)
17 November 2008 (released)
03 November 2008
I was all fired up to hate this album. As a general rule, I find this type of music shallow and unoriginal. But I didn't hate it quite as much as I expected to. And after a
few listens I even caught myself singing along to one of the refrains.
The Promise is one of the best songs on the album and is as instantly likeable as No Good Advice and The Show were. It remains to be seen whether it will stand up to repeated listening though. I suspect some of the songs could certainly grate on the nerves after a while.
Another decent track is Untouchable and it wouldn't be out of place at a 90s dance night. In fact, I think the main reason the album isn't a complete write-off is because it evokes a sense of nostalgia of the late 80s and early 90s.
There is fairly heavy use of synth and singing over a fairly decent dance backing tracks as in Turn 2 Stone which is also not bad.
Don't expect too much from the lyrics though. They typically centre round love ? love gained and lost, painful love and great love, love is hard and love is the key, I could go on but you get the idea.
But then there are some shockingly bad tracks which ruin any credibility the album may have had. Live in the Country's drum and bass intro promises something exciting but then flops into a series of 'Ooohs', 'yeahs' and appalling lyrics.
And don't even get me started on the embarrassment that is Revolution in the Head. 'Give me da ting, hey hey hey ah ah oh' are the opening lyrics done in a faux hip-hop Jamaican accent and it goes downhill from there onwards.
An album is supposed to take the listener on a journey and most of these songs lack any sense of forward motion so the listener ultimately feels cheated.
If you're looking for a series of dance-floor fillers, then the album is probably a success. But if you're after something deeper and more philosophical then don't buy
this.
