This album really isn’t as bad as you think it will be. It is still quite bad, granted, but you thought it was going to be really awful didn’t you. Which might be a rather closed statement to start a review with, but it’s the truth. There are aspects of harmless redemption – mostly located on the first half of the album, which would have been very useful if we still bought music on cassette tape. A group of session musicians (and as warm up to becoming The Feeling, a covers band called The Alps) playing 70s soft rock tributes with twee white smiles isn’t exactly going to light a spark under anybody, other than perhaps David Essex. Though admittedly it gives them free reign of a whole niche and exclusive use of the genre’s hairdresser, should they want it. So is this the kick-starting of a revival, or a genre finally laid to rest?
Bands like ELO and 10CC may have their page in history, but surely only for a handful of tracks – the passing of time having done their overcooked muggy pop some favours. And that’s what redeems the album, a small handful of tracks like singles ‘Fill My Little World’ and ‘Sewn’, which have an undeniably bold sense of melody and buoyant sensibility, but which ultimately do nothing, go nowhere. But they also do remind of the unquenchable chirpiness of The Bluetones and the steady swing of Athlete at their early best, and those are certainly likable qualities.
But then there’s the rest of the record. Opening track ‘I Want You Now’ has a generally cheery strut, but ultimately sounds like Kaiser Cheifs locked in a hot car for hours with the windows up. And this is the acceptable end of things. ‘Never Be Lonely’ is in some terrifying no man’s land between Cliff Richard and The Osmonds. ‘Anyone’, is a terrible wounded cowboy ballad that owes a debt to Bryan Adams. And the overlong ‘Same Old Stuff’ is a medley of all of Queen’s pompous bad bits played quite inadequately. Seriously, that guitar sounds horrible. In fact the whole album underlines quite how well The Polyphonic Spree did to siphon off just good bits from the ELO back catalogue.