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albums - current and forthcoming releases...       page 28

 August  2003
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54-40
Ashley Park
Biff Bang Pow!
Frank Black and the Catholics
Fiery Furnaces
The Hiss
Pleasure
Roller
Scout Niblett
Shack
Spearmint
Spiritualised
Third Eye Blind
Various - Tales from the Australian Underground...
Andy Votel

 FRANK BLACK AND THE CATHOLICS Show Me Your Tears (Cooking Vinyl)

 

When Frank Black released two albums simultaneously last year, with a whopping combined 39 tracks on them, you might have thought the follow-up would take a bit longer than normal. Not a bit of it. Contrary as ever, it’s practically impossible to talk about or listen to Frank’s work without casting your mind back to his majestic Pixies back catalogue.

If truth be told of course, it’s utterly pointless to expect him to still be peddling the same sound as those brilliant Bostonians this far down the line, but it takes a small leap of faith to appreciate an East Coast guy recording an album on the West Coast (in LA) that’s rooted in deep South influences. Jaina Blues and The Snake fail to turn their bluesy riffs and boogie piano into anything of great interest but New House Of The Pope and This Old Heartache almost come over like a delta Nick Cave. If they ever film Nick’s novel, And The Ass Saw The Angel, then they might sneak onto the soundtrack.

My Favourite Kiss has a gentle country feel but Horrible Day and Goodbye Lorraine up the ante as jaunty pedal steel and piano driven hoedown stompalongs with optional thigh slapping. Recent single Everything Is New is a glorious Tom Petty-style tune that demands dropping the top down as you cruise along the freeway but whether it works on the M25 is debatable.

As well as having the most Pixies-ish title on the album, Massif Centrale is the closest Frank comes to scaling his former heights. Rollocking guitars and a fluctuating vocal range take you back to somewhere near the glory days but Gigantic it aint. No one could ever accuse him of being a slow, unproductive writer but his quality control meter remains as wonky as it has ever since the masterpiece that was Doolittle. Here comes your middle-aged man.

Reviewed by James S
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  ASHLEY PARK The Secretariat Motor Hotel (Darling Music)


The third album from Ashley Park is fascinating slow rolling alt.rock.  Like fellow Canadians Neko Case and The New Pornographers, and before that Neil Young, they capture the lonesome, elemental heart of the country without recourse to the country singer’s staples of dead dogs, cheating wives and treacherous whisky bottles.  One staple they do rely on is Charlie Hale’s masterly pedal steel guitar, which illuminates many tracks and imparts a strong country feel.  The overall mood, though, is  quintessential Americana, with its gentle melodies and Terry Miles’ mournful lyrics sung in that familiar soft American croak-croon.  

Ashley Park have toured with, among others, Beachwood Sparks, Of Montreal, Essex Green, Great Lakes and Lilys; throw in Grandaddy and our own Homescience and that gives you a good idea of their sound.   But that’s a big ballpark; the album is full of elegantly ragged melodies and mournful tones, a series of cameos about the denizens of the imaginary motel of the title.  The Old Wolves has a gruff voice playing over a gorgeous, tricksy melody.  Rocco The Policeman (and His Dog) offers the sweetest, most insidious melodies and poetic lyrics; it wears country clothes but there’s a college education underneath.  There are some psychedelic folky touches too, the effects on Father Hill’s American Farm bursting like sherbet on your tongue.  Kelly Haigh’s harmonies are perfectly pitched; on songs like Born Again (with its shades of ‘Wichita Linesman’) the effect is very Gram and Emmylou.  

Some albums are collections of singles: this is really an album full of mood and tone, demanding to be heard as a piece.   The cumulative effect is really quite hypnotic and lovely.   

   Reviewed by Ged M
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 THE FIERY FURNACES Gallowsbird’s Bark (Rough Trade)

 

There’s four of them, two of whom are brother and sister and they have no bassist.  And this Chicago quartet have produced the kookiest most utterly  eclectic and WONDERFUL hotchpotch of toons you’ll hear all year.  And this is their strength.  You try and find a pocket to slip them into and they won’t fit.  Certain movement obsessed publications will try.  Quirkycore? You what?   Rumblepop?  Oh perrrrlease…  No these babies won’t be bracketed because they sound like nobody else.  Of course there’s little smidgens of others.  A little bit of White Stripe blues rawk.  But they’re not simply a garage band.  The odd touch of frantic quirky keyboards.  But they’re not power pop. I could go on.  And here is another strength.  They don’t go on; they tease you with a couple of minutes of catchy riffery or pleasantly plonked keys and then stop. Suddenly. Leaving nothing too heavy to sit there undigested. 

Frontperson Eleanor’s vocals are rarely conventional, whatever that means; she narrates, frequently frantic and breathless.  Usually there’s a tale being told, a journey being recounted with place names dropped like postcards, and an acute attention to detail, “look at the water, filthy, dirty, cloudy, mucky, crystal clear” (Crystal Clear).  And in a year that has so far been short of many exceptional long players, they’ve produced one that is sixteen tracks long and bereft of filler with its peak at the very end, the stunning haunting blues of We Got Back the Plague with Eleanor’s voice echoey and sensual.  Yes, the Fiery Furnaces are red hot and certainly more original than this finish…

Reviewed by Paul M
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 SPIRITUALIZED  Amazing Grace

 

In January this year I was extremely lucky to meet one of my heroes. Since hearing ‘Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space’ I have been completely in thrall of Spiritualized’s work. When I heard Pierce was helping out Spring Heel Jack on a brief tour, I met Mr Spaceman after the gig. And luckily, the man was nothing like the way the music press make him appear. Here was a warm, approachable man, happy to talk about music that we both love. And the biggest surprise of the night was when he told me that there was a brand new Spiritualized album on the way later this year.

And here it is, coming, by Spiritualized standards, hot on the heels of 2001’s mammoth, orchestral ‘Let It Come Down’, ‘Amazing Grace’ has been touted by some unimaginative people as Spiritualized’s garage album. This isn’t true. However, the album gets off to an explosive start with the rocking This Little Life Of Mine, which almost sounds like Oasis with a bit of imagination. She Kissed Me (And It Felt Like A Hit) sounds like a not too distant cousin of Electricity and Twelve Steps. But, like Pierce it seems, I’ll never tire of this sound.

It’s here that the garage rock comparisons start to seem a little false. Hold On is a charming sweet ballad about the need to surround yourself with the people you care about. The Ballad Of Richie Lee tells the sad tale of former touring partner and lead singer of Acetone, who committed suicide. The Power And The Glory sounds more like something from Spring Heel Jack’s ‘Amassed’ free jazz album (thanks in no small part to the likes of Evan Parker contributing.)

There have already been complaints by long term fans that the album doesn’t flow like earlier work, and the drones so beloved of many fans are gone. However, a lot of these people complain that ‘Let It Come Down’ was overwrought. Pierce is trying to keep Spiritualized fresh, and knowing his obsession with production, it can’t have been easy to leave ‘Amazing Grace’ so simple. Yet he’s once again achieved his task and made an album that’s going to sound great live. So, nothing new then, but there aren’t many musicians so far into their career that could come up with something quite like ‘Amazing Grace’.

Reviewed by Rob B
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  PLEASURE Pleasure (Circus)

 

Pleasure (the group, the album) is 24-year-old London based Norwegian, Fred Ball.   Mr Pleasure has  written, arranged and produced everything.  And probably wrote and delivered the letters to the guest vocalists who aid and abet him, the more well known of these being Justinne Frischmann doing her disco automaton vocal on the current single Don’t Look the Other Way and Cerys Matthews who lends her sore throaty delivery to the ballad-y Stories.   

Ball makes no secret of his fixation with 70’s music, especially disco, and there is no escaping the analogue synth swirls and squeals (the aural equivalent of a pair of hipster flares and platform shoes) that abound and generally things are mainly confined to 70’s sounds and sensibilities, focusing on electro-disco dynamics. The opening Don’t Look the Other Way is a stomping electronica thing that nods at Daft Punk, a style revisited on All I Want (featuring Heidrun Bjornsdottir) which uses that tinkling synth run last heard on…oh, I don’t know, let’s say I lost my heart to starship trooper.  Sensitivity,  is a catchy pounding disco thing (again), using synth swirls and the title of Disco Doctor may tell you all you need to know even if the punchy drum machine, electronic claps, vocoder-ed voices don’t, whilst the final track The Visionary is filled with Rick Wakeman-like squelchy synth swathes provided by former Prince cohort Doctor Fink.  Apparently, as a fan of Rick Wakeman, Bell had asked the Yes man to play on the album but said no.  His ghostly hands don't sound to far away though  *Shudder*.  There is some variety however and the disco-electronica approach is dropped for more traditional verse/chorus structure as on tender tracks like Stories, which uses piano and strings, or the affecting From the Country to the City (featuring Ed Harcourt on vocals) employing acoustic guitar, melodica and strings.

This is all coolly efficient stuff, the tunes are catchy even if they don’t take residence in your mind for too long and overall it is quite pleasure-able.  I’m sure the ads people and TV programmers will be thinking how some of these tracks could be used. Feels like it should come with its own glitter ball, though. 

Reviewed by Kev O
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 SHACK …Here’s Tom With The Weather (?)

 

This opening paragraph should not be here. However, Shack’s criminally undervalued back catalogue renders them still in need of an introduction. Gripe over, this is the 4th collection from the now 40-something Scouse troupe, and sees them reverting to a more stripped-down sound, following 1999’s deliciously overwrought ‘HMS Fable’. Of course, the subtle delights of ‘…Here’s Tom with the Weather’ will only be heard by a select few. They should count themselves very lucky indeed.

Opener As Long As I’ve Got You is a perfect introduction to the brother’s Head et. al.’s lilting bittersweet folk/pop. The trademark glorious harmonies are used here to supreme effect, creating a work no Byrds fan can seriously afford to ignore. The debt to Love, meanwhile, is the one most commonly alluded to, and this debt is repaid with a nod to Arthur Lee in Byrds Turn To Stone, a number which just so happens to be the most beautiful ode to human companionship since ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’. Although in this case, replace the weedy, woolly protagonists of Paul Simon’s original, with 2 young brothers desperate to eke out some sort of escape from their bleak, skag-filled council estate. This album is much more than Michael Head following Arthur Lee’s musical vision though, there are even flashes of alt. country here, which would please those fans of Lambchop’s sweeter moments.

This album also contains balls, On The Terrace is bursting with northern swagger; an anthem of the sort that used to seep out of Noel Gallagher’s every orifice. That said, beauty is what Shack do best, and beauty is rarely as much in abundance as on Carousel. A breezy wistful masterpiece, even just a brief listen would make any crippling Sunday hangover seem bearable. For Shack’s music to remain so optimistic in give their turbulent-at-best life history remains a complete mystery. Closer Happy Ever After is typical of this incredible trend, an achingly perfect song, which is even more heartwarming than a Frank Capra weepie. Much of the orchestration here also owes a debt to classic British folk, and it is indeed possible to imagine the master tapes landing on a certain Joe Boyd’s desk over 30 years ago. It is this beautiful orchestration which rides high throughout, and makes ‘…Here’s Tom With The Weather’ one of the loveliest things released this year.

Forgiving the rare moments of unnecessary dullness, Shack have yet again created another wonderful collection of folk/pop delights. Given the current interest in the recent explosion of young scouse talent, it is quite something that the old-timers can still magic up something as exceptionally glorious as this.

 

Reviewed by Adam W
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  BIFF BANG POW! Waterbomb - The best of... (Rev-Ola)


Now here’s a curiosity for the curious.  Ever wanted to know what sort of music record company managers make? Now here’s your chance….for back in the 80’s Alan McGee and Dick Green, founders of The Living Room club and Creation Records, also passed the time as Creation band Biff Bang Pow! putting out six singles and six albums before calling it a day in 1990.

In fact, this is more than a curiosity because the west coast drenched pop of BBP! – when it works well – stands up to any music produced at the time (ie Teardrop Explodes)  and BBP! could get away with it in today’s retro psychedelic pop market.  It has that 80’s sound for sure – all echoey drums and vocals, jangley guitar, tambourines and harmonicas all over the place yet curiously it doesn’t seem that dated.  Where songs work well they are poppy, lively, catchy affairs. When they forgo percussion and slow things down for some Scott Walker/Cope-y Tiny Children type effort on Baby you just don’t care, or Hug Me Honey, it doesn’t work so well and drags.

You can hear influences aplenty (if not downright copying of riffs) in the jangley guitar of The Byrds or swelling swirling organ of The Doors (Then When I Scream), or the Stones on the Wild Horses-like She Paints.  There are some terrific songs here and there’s no justice in the world if songs like Love’s Going Out of Fashion (even with its Robert Smith-like vocal and wailing wild harmonicas) were ever lost.

An excellent selection and if you need one BPP! CD in your collection (whether you need one is a moot point of course) then this BBP! approved selection is just dandy. And where are they now? McGee Poptones label brought us the Hives and Dick is now supporting bands like Bright Eyes on his Wichita label.  Wonder what sort of music they would make nowadays.

Review by Kev O
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 ANDY VOTEL  Music To Watch Girls Cry

 

Manchester’s rennaissance man takes time out from running Twisted Nerve and producing Badly Drawn Boy’s fourth album to treat us to a bizarre and eclectic mix, originally released as just a promo CD-R.  Music To Watch Girls Cry is a musical orgy of sounds. 75 songs and snippets in 78 minutes.

And Votel being Votel, he’s made it pretty difficult to come up with all the samples used here. It’s frankly impossible. Andy is showing off his collection of obscure records, but unlike a lot of people who like doing this sort of thing, Votel pulls it off. Some of the samples are fantastic. We’re treated to prime rare cuts from Serge Gainsbourg, Captain Beefheart, hell, there’s even a brief snatch of the woolly hatted ones’ Riding With Gabriel Greenburg, the first track from EP1.

Rare pyschedelia rubs up alongside seventies funk, folk covers and dialogue from films I’ve probably never heard of, though I did hear a bit of Lost Highway and Frank Zappa’s 200 Motels in there. The highlight is the all-too-brief snatch of a moog instrumental version of Hey Jude, totally unexpected and fantastic.

Stealing the title from some unimaginative easy listening compilations, one can only wish mix complations all had the wit and imagination of this one.

Reviewed by Rob B
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 THE HISS Panic Movement (Polydor)

 

The Hiss from Atlanta, share not just the producer from Oasis (Owen Morris) but also the quest to recreate classic period rock.  The twist is that rather than Slade and the Beatles, the Hiss have sought out influences from the blues orientated stadium bands; Led Zep, ‘Exile’-era Stones and Aerosmith.  There’s plenty of sneering and big riffs and if you like your rock straightforward, familiar and unsubtle you’ll find plenty to enjoy here.  Indeed it’s far from a bad album; opener and recent single Clever Kicks is a raucous fuelled up slice of Stooges rawk and Lord’s Prayer is an enjoyable heads down roof thumping chugger.  Others are so obviously pilfered they might as well carry the original owner’s name tag on the collar (Brass Tacks is Jumping Jack Flash) and the ballads, though pleasant enough, tend to slip into the Oasis loping and plodding arena. You know, the one that produced Wonderwall.  Quite.

Fans of the sneering monobrowed Mancs would probably find an awful lot to appreciate on here and certainly more than the squabbling siblings have produced since What’s the Story but, for the rest of us, this will be musical Pot Noodle; bland, unsubstantial and not as good as the real thing.

Reviewed by Paul M
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 SCOUT NIBLETT I Am (Too Pure)

 

Scout Niblett has an American name, sounds American and records in America with US rock uberlord Steve Albini as producer. It seems almost perverse then to discover that she’s actually from Nottingham rather than New York, Nashville or Nantucket. So much for the ‘if it walks like a duck’ theory.

Singer/drummer Scout, real name Emma, took her moniker from her favourite character in To Kill A Mockingbird and so began an avowed and unashamed fascination with our partners in genocide across the Atlantic. If you want proof, just listen to the way she coos “hey America” repeatedly on In Love over the sound of native war drums. Her sound is a lo-fi mix of garage, antifolk and even, god help us, riot grrl and ends up equal parts great and ghastly.

At its worst, Fire Flies is a terrible one-note scratchy guitar and monotone vocal enlivened only by the curious wish to see the titular creatures have sex, whilst the title track itself is more of the same but without the insect porn. Until Death meanders aimlessly for an unnecessary five and a half minutes like a bored Cat Power and Boy is one line sung a dozen or so times over a sporadic drumbeat. Yawn. Only slightly more interesting are Miss In Love With Her Own Fate and Your Beat Kicks Back Like Death where Scout unwittingly highlights the limitations of one girl and her drums.

On the plus side however, No-Ones Wrong (Giricocola) and I’ll Be A Prince (Shhh) burn slowly before igniting with some neat jerky jiffs and fiery vocal pyrotechnics, making you wish she added brackets after more of her song titles. Its All For You is pleasantly odd in a mis-punctuated way and 12 Miles has a gentle nod to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Pin but it’s current single Drummer Boy that proves to be ‘I Am’’s real redeeming feature, creeping stealthily into your consciousness before unleashing some excellent thundering White Stripes-y guitar dynamics and building to a ferocious slash and scream climax.

Certainly, no one could accuse Scout Niblett of lacking passion, fire and guts. You might have a decent case against her ability to play and hold a tune on occasions though.

Reviewed by James S
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 SPEARMINT My Missing Days (Hitback)

 

London’s Spearmint have somehow survived despite the music industry’s purge of anything poppy and British.  Eight years in existence, they still have clear Britpop leanings but in spite of critical rejection in ‘My Missing Days’ they have produced a wonderfully cheerful summery album, chock full of potential singles, invariably marrying uptempo pleasant music with dark intelligent lyrics.

A Happy Ending kicks off proceedings, building with a repeated “I’m still waiting” refrain and then it comes…. Left Among the Living kicks in with a classic Northern Soul riff, accompanied by spoken vocals reminiscent of primetime Pulp and a big chorus.  Superb. Giving it Away starts with a rather irritatingly forced high pitched vocal but comes to life with a hilarious monologued list of useless items.  Time is Now is a bright and breezy estuary English girl/boy shared vocal and a tune Saint Etienne would happily claim.  Don’t Get Me Started is another wonderfully instant northern stomper.  The Book is a cheery latin tinged number with a Ballboy-esq dialogue…

Given the right exposure; a car ad, a Sky Sports highlights background play, etc, one of many tracks here could launch the ‘mint into their deserved place at pop’s top table.  And all this despite being fronted by a man called Shirley.

Reviewed by Paul M
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 VARIOUS ARTISTS Tales From The Australian Underground: Singles 1976-1989 (Feel Presents, Australia)

 

This is another in a spate of Australian compilations (‘Do The Pop!’ was the last we saw). This one tells the history of underground/ independent music down under from 1976 to 1989.  As we’ve said before, the Australian music scene developed separately from the US and UK, taking some cues from abroad but adding some of its own Outback madness as well (hence a 60s psychedelic strain as well as the later metal buffoonery).  And the size of the continent meant that different cities developed their own scenes as much as the whole country did.  So for every familiar burst of garage rock fraternity with the US/UK scenes, there’s a feeling of isolationist oddity too. 

CD1 kicks off with the sound of Radio Birdman’s Burned My Eye.  It’s Motor City rock’n’roll; Detroit native Deniz Tek had imported the Stooges sound to Sydney with him, although there are glam rock traces attached to this version, the original ’76 single.  Then there’s the classic of classics, the Saints’ This Perfect Day (original ’77 version again).  It’s not widely known that the same episode of Top of the Pops in that safety-pinned summer of ’77 featured both The Sex Pistols (Holidays in the Sun) and The Saints; one of them came across as a music-hall act and the other one as the purest punk spirit of rebellion and renewal.  And if you’ve seen Dame John Lydon since 1977, you’ll know which one was which. 

The album differs from the other Aussie compilations by not claiming that everything in their southern hemisphere garden was garage rosy.  The Birthday Party’s goth/Beefheart warped Happy Birthday knocks the album off its early rock’n’roll path.  The contrary electronica strain of Australian music is also well represented here in bands like The Makers of the Dead Travel Fast.  Post-punk gets a look in with the wonderfully eclectic Laughing Clowns; imagine members of Spandau Ballet decamping en masse to join Magazine and you have the melodic, sax and piano heavy Sometimes (I Just Can’t Live With Anyone).   The second CD features another generation of bands coming out on labels like Green, Mushroom and Waterfront, less Detroit influenced and more obviously picking up on 60s folk and psychedelic bands.  The Triffids’ early single Beautiful Waste is Dylan-like, lonely and wistful and hints at the greatness of their later songs while Lighthouse Keepers offer up the folk-rocky Ocean Liner that sounds like a template for the New Acoustic Movement.   Off on another spur, The Moffs blazed a trail for the seriously psychedelic and the Someloves resurrected peg-panted 60s garage rock.  Maybe ‘Tales….’ tails off towards the end as Aussie rock became more global in the late 80s but the album is a fascinating root around in someone else’s attic and a chance to uncover some neglected gems. 

Reviewed by Ged M
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 54-40 Goodbye Flatland (Key)

 

Virtually unheard of in the UK, Canada's 54-40 have been releasing records for nigh on 20 years playing the sort of alternative rock MTV2 have forgotten all about; the kind American college kids were big on circa 1986. 54-40 take a big tablespoon of REM, mix it with a dollop of U2 bombast and spice it with Smithereens melody. And, though they originate from same campus, it is a shame 54-40 don't get nearly half the glory of their contemporaries because 'Goodbye Flatland', for the most part, is a worthy effort.

Opener Casual Viewin' is an infectious opener, filled with zest and boasting decent Beatles-style harmonies whilst Ride and Take Me Out have the stadium in mind, sounding not too dissimilar from 'Unforgettable Fire'-era U2. The ghostly title track is probably the best and least commercial song on the album, successfully transforming the hushed, barren atmosphere into a sea of powerchords and back again effortlessly. It's certainly distinct from the predominantly power-pop feel of the album. Not that there's much wrong with the rest of it, though One Gun is rather drab whilst Broken Girl comes close to sounding like ghastly fellow countrymen Nickleback. Still, for those who long for the days of good old-fashioned, plaid -shirted US college rock, you could do a lot worse than check out 'Goodbye Flatland'.

Reviewed by Ross H
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 ROLLER Impossibly Real (Key)

 

To paraphrase Brian Wilson, Roller just weren't made for these times. If they were, their name would be The Rollers and their music would display a considerable Stooges influence. As it is, the Manchester-based quartet's second album is a refreshingly positive and down to earth statement with no regard for fickle trends. Sure, Roller's apparent quest for 'authenticity' and passion for 'real music' may prompt critics to sharpen the knives that bit extra but only a fool would do so without giving 'Impossibly Real' a spin.

Opener Up OnThe Hill sets out the stall, displaying Roller's knack for decent, radio-friendly indie-rock. Yet their trump card is vocalist Craig White whose passionate, soulful delivery, pitched somewhere between Ian McNabb and a more heartfelt Robbie Williams, makes the likes of A Thousand Stars and the excellent title track all the more uplifting. Bitter Mile comes on like latter day Teenage Fanclub with its chiming guitars and Byrdsian harmonies, whilst Baby Ran and Coming Around Again are worthy Who-esque power-pop nuggets. 'Impossibly Real' doesn't move musical goalposts but, if Roller move hearts, then these Northern souls can be content knowing they have done their job well.

Reviewed by Ross H
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  THIRD EYE BLIND Out Of The Vein (EastWest/Elektra)

 

You know those long, dark nights in life where you howl pitifully at the gods for having wasted some of this precious short life on some truly fucking awful form of alleged entertainment? Well here we go again.  Joining a list of recent atrocities headed by the irredeemably jaw-dropping horrors that were Anger Management and Fortysomething is ‘Out Of The Vein’, made by the latest incumbents of my own if-only-I-had-a-bullet-to-engrave their-cunting-names-on top ten. Or Third Eye Blind as their record label know them. Put simply, come back The All-American Rejects, all is forgiven. Hell, I’d even let them off with involvement in the invasion of Iraq, the worldwide spread of Aids and fucking Pop Idol if it meant never having to listen to this turgid one-paced wank rag of a record again. Sweet Christ, are you trying to be a fucking rock band or a boy band? You make the fucking Barenaked Ladies sound like the Pistols at times.  On Misfits you sing “life, you know it moves much too slow”. Have you ever tried listening to one of your fucking records through in one go? It makes sitting through the Queen Mothers funeral seem like an episode of 24. I had time to develop Alzheimers, find the cure and then forget it by the time you finished.  And don’t even get me started on the fucking song where you talk about your near-death experience in a hit and run accident. It wasn’t fucking near enough to save the last hour of my life, you cunts. If I ever see you on the North Circular, you’ll know about it.  Still it was better than Anger Management.

Reviewed by James S
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