When Phil Spector built his Wall Of Sound in the early nineteen-sixties there was something there propping it up at the front: one bloody great big sparkling motherf***er of a tune. And although Beck and Elliott Smith producer Rob Schnapf and the boys have clearly mastered what Phil Spector failed to do on previous sour-fest, ‘Silence Is Easy’ and produced something of real bombast and pounding heartache, there’s one almighty flaw; in cranking the guitars up to eleven and adding a little thunder to Ben Byrne’s solid if unremarkable skin thumping they’ve produced not so much a wall as a mulch of sound, the songs barely distinguishable beneath their pumping, fiery fortitude and Byrne’s lardy and ungainly quarter-pounder beats.
James Walsh’s voice still thrums like an emotional telegraph wire and there’s an additional urgency and resilience to his usual fragile paeans as adequately verified by the mighty ‘In The Crossfire’ and the reckless, shouty chorus of ‘Faith Hope And Love’. With it’s whooping ‘uh ohs’ and snarling, jangly pulse, ‘Keep Us Together’ even has a smidgen of the swirling U2 colossus about it too. And whilst Barry Westhead’s parping Hammond organ fails to really achieve the rousing, spiritual zenith it clearly seeks it’s the egg that binds this cake together. The band’s legendary firebrand passion teeters precariously toward maudlin sentimentality at times, but if tracks like ‘This Time’ are anything to go by, Walsh’s mawkish balladry is taking a frisky, melodic turn for the better – out ‘Keane-ing’ even Keane in the pursuit of bright and eager anthems of the heart.
If I were James Walsh I’d consider losing my fellow pie-eaters to pursue a solo course of action as this is about as far as it can naturally go without introducing the sweeping molecular changes that bands like Radiohead brought to the broth. Tellingly, the album’s highlight is the wintry ‘Jeremiah’ – gentle, crisp and even and devoid of all the usual dramatic chaff. The fondest farewell? I think it must be, really. At least it would end on a pleasing note.