There is a billboard just round the corner from my flat that I pass every morning on the way to work. It features the assertion, beneath 4 rather anonymous, skinny black jean clad youths, that Razorlight’s eponymous second record is, and I quote, “the best guitar album since Definitely Maybe”. Well, indeed. Courtesy of Q Magazine, if you were curious. Which says an awful lot more about Q Magazine, that writer and its blunted senses than it does about this album. If ‘Razorlight’ were a point to be reached from ‘Definitely Maybe’ using the public transport network it would involve at least 4 changes on the buses, a short tube journey replaced by walking due to line closures, 3 journeys on the train, an overnight stay in a hard to find B&B, a long haul flight, a cross-mountain trek in the care of blind sherpa, a bicycle ride with a flat tyre and probably another bus journey spent in suffocating gridlock. That’s how on the ball Q are, and about as era defining this album is. Even the “guitar album” portion of the claim is dubious. That is what they made last time, granted, but what they’ve made now lacks that focus, and others.
Loss of focal points, if anything, characterises the transition between ‘Up All Night’ and this identity crisis sophomore effort. First impressions are of careful, smooth pop-rock minimalists, like if you booted the side of the mixing desk all the expected aggro would tumble back out and right that error. Guitars sketch the outlines of songs but are sort of apologetic by nature, and almost entirely unacquainted with the distortion pedal. For all the obsession with The Jam and Paul Weller’s early days a couple of years ago, we never expected anyone to follow him on into the Style Council. But the threat is here even if it’s not yet fully realised. Just take ‘Hold On’ and its quasi-Motown brass. Or is it more Phil Collins in his Buster days that we’re reminded of? I kid ye not. Either way, it’s hardly adrenaline soaked youth shooting from the hip in the city’s underbelly on a Friday night, is it.
Free flowing observations, reflections, considerations and lusts, an evocative and appealingly arranged testimonial of a liberated 20-something Londoner trailing sparks; that’s how Borrell managed to jostle up against his own hyperbole on their debut. Now he just sings about, y’know, stuff. Love, etc. Even tumbling into the cliché of writing songs on the road about being on the road (so far from home, etc. *yawn*). There’s little in the way of inspired poetry, little unequivocal passion, little obvious back-story, context or necessity in his stencilled words. And if that can’t fill the hole left by the scarcity of the more timid soundtrack, what can? The very final lyric on the album seems a fair enough appraisal at this point: “you’ve met your match..”.
But this is an album to live with for a short while, because for the two steps they’ve taken back, stripping themselves of their stripes, they do put another forward. Impulse is replaced by crisper songwriting, their playing is admittedly more accomplished and it’s his intuitive way with melody that will probably begin to win you over. The single ‘In the Morning’ is a buoyant detailed weave of clean, whiter-than-white guitar and gathering melody and following track ‘Who Needs Love’ is carried brilliantly by the vocal and a solid lyrical theme on top of quietly hammering piano and soul inflections. But you can only really ad lib “c’mown Andy!” into a tune if you are actually Bruce Springsteen, which he’s clearly not, but that doesn’t stop them having a further, wider bash at his style in ‘Pop Song 2006’ and ‘America’. Fancying their luck, with ‘Before I Fall To Pieces’ they have a go at The Bluebells’ ‘Young At Heart’ in the style of Barenaked Ladies with some Who style windmill arms for effect. Success is mixed.
Bands need to and should progress and adapt, stagnation is stifling and unattractive, though the idea of growing up will never be romantic – a curse that looms around most corners on this record. But as palatable and superficially enjoyable as this might be on occasion, their/his ambition has seemingly overtaken their capability, interfering with their sensibility and dulling the instinct that was so prevalent before they were cuffed to the pop-treadmill. Acceptable, just. Home to a couple more top 10 singles, probably. Likely to be referenced on billboards in ten years time, very unlikely.