You have to wonder sometimes. Wonder where things came from. And why. And where they’re going. And why also. Because some things get locked on, or at least thrown into by some foreign force, a trajectory that doesn’t entirely tally with common sense or proven patterns (not that pop music always follows rules). Lets call it Starsailor Syndrome – in the Top 10, selling records, winning plaudits and all with very little beneath a very calculated surface save for raw data. So in effect it can amount to little other than plagiarism because there is no heart, nothing there with the grip to actually take anything that was someone else’s as their own. Re: The Music – We find ourselves in the strange position where more has been written about the band than the band has actually done itself. And when music does filter through it seems to amount to little more than a pastiche of early 90s baggy hang-ons Flowered Up.
Now much has been made of the victorious, meek inheriting the earth, live tour-de-force that The Music can be. And having caught them earlier this year at Glastonbury, and already being familiar with their first couple of limp singles, we were surprised at the accuracy of some of those statements after all. It was nothing inspirational, but it was atmospheric and bonding. Which makes it such a shame that the album has arrived sounding like little more than a collection of demos, ideas that might turn into something one day, but are far from blossoming or fragrant. The Music’s flower is one nurtured on a single synthetic additive, neglecting the organic and natural that may have made them strong.
Where there are moments and songs that seem more developed, the expanding and distant sounding Charlatans-esque epic ‘Human’ and to some extent the feel-good gathering of ‘The People’, they are too long and lack the body they need to go the distance. And take the basic sub-baggy dance rhythms away and you’re left with little more than repetitive blues rock. It’s like they’ve taken they’re entire cue from the Led Zep remix at the start of Top Of The Pops, but then made the mistake of making every song longer than 20 seconds. Then of course there is his opinion-dividing nasal yelp, failing mainly because it sounds like he’s got nothing worth using it for. Hardly the future of music, British or otherwise. Offer a bored kid some coloured Lego bricks and long enough and he will build something pretty. Give him some candy instead.