If 2004 is shaping up as a pop mirror to 1995, which increasingly it seems it is, then we’re still missing the top line equivalents of your Blurs, your Pulps and your Oasis’s. We’re pretty much sorted up to Supergrass/Elastica (Franz Ferdinand/The Libertines), and the lower sandpit filled with the likes of S*M*A*S*H, These Animal Man and 60ft Dolls back then is reaching capacity these days with the likes of The Ordinary Boys, Delays and now Razorlight. Hell, we’ve even got an unseeded replacement for the spiritual leadership of Paul Weller in Graham Coxon’s latest heroisms.
But back to Razorlight, a band who paint themselves at the front of whatever picture we’re painting thanks to lead ‘light Johnny Borrell pissing off with the paint tin and insisting he’s the only one gifted enough to use it. He’s not, but he makes a damn fine case for it with this, the band’s exceptionally fiery debut album. And he ain’t giving it back either way. It’s packed with rough scattergun melodies, skin-tight new-wave juddering and tattered vocals that sound well lived in, all handled with ruthlessly firm hands. Rich lyrics bundle past at breakneck pace, calling out to be scribbled down and learnt inside out. As much as our instinctive reaction to shameless self-promotion is to presume the opposite, the kid has actually lived up to all sorts with the 13 thrilling tracks on ‘Up All Night’.
You’ll already be aware of ‘Rip It Up’, ‘Stumble & Fall’ and the amazing 60ft-Dolls-eating-spinach-twatting-The-Jam-and-drinking-the-elexir on ‘Rock ‘N’ Roll Lies’, all of which make you want to do the kind of shaky-armed dancing they’d probably have printed instructive diagrams for in Smash Hits back in the swingin’ 60s, were it in print back then. But there are 10 other equals, or near as. ‘Vice’ and the title track have impassioned, building Costello-esque spirits, ‘Get It And Go’ spits syllables furiously and drives choppy guitars to their capacity, and ‘Fall Fall Fall’ closes the album with a melancholic maturity that you hope can be explored in the future. Here’s a band looking for promotion then, who knows if they’ll get it, but it’ll be a lot of fun watching them try.