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I’m not going to throw irrelevant figures at you but Girls Aloud are without doubt
the outstanding success story of talent shows. The girls return with yet
another album, their fifth in just under six years in the business and once
again for unpredictable pop it
’s immense.
Opening track and recent chart-topper ‘The Promise’ has more
writers than The Bible (none of
them in the band I might add).
Undoubtedly the track that carries the 60s girlband style they were striving
for, it
’s essential Girls Aloud with strong-emotive vocals laced in between a defining,
string-influenced beat. Fans of the girls expecting a follow-on to the likes of
‘Call the Shots’ will be most pleased with Pet Shop Boy-penned ‘The Loving Kind’ which almost sounds like a heterosexual version of one of their hits, as you’d expect...
Bubble-gum pop is well-represented as well with the usual trend of
female-attitude vocals on
‘Love is the Key’. Shockingly catchy and almost what you’d expect to be playing in a place like The Twilight Zone. ‘Turn to Stone’ is the unexpected surprise gem in this sparkling collection. Packed with a
funky electro-pop beat, it adds powerful vocal effects to Cheryl
’s voice- resulting in an emotive disco number which works so well.
It has to be noted that one noticeable absence on this album is the somewhat
overbearing Nadine Coyle who, unlike previous albums is completely toned down
and pushed to the back. A change of image towards Cheryl as leader of the band
I suspect.
Of course if the band will start to revolve around Mrs. Cole then there will
have to be a song referencing hubbie
’s infidelity (so The Sun reliably informs us) and so comes ‘Love is Pain’. Sounding like a modern club anthem, it mixes heavy dance beats with poignant
lyrics like:
“What you say/What you dream/It don’t matter to me/just be faithful to me”
There are of course some surprises such as ‘Fix Me Up’ (which the girls may be saying but there’s no way the Stephen Hawking-esque vocal does). Referencing Marvin Gaye and
trying a bizarre funky beat, it doesn
’t work quite as well.
It was inevitable that Girls Aloud’s break-neck style was going to evolve into dance one day and there are at least
three tracks on here which teeter on that border.
‘Untouchable’ actually voices Nadine predominantly who, as usual, epitomizes a great track.
Closing track
‘We Wanna Party’ is not surprising considering the band’s reputation and is very well-written, again not by the band, who sing “we wanna party but we got no soul”. And maybe they haven’t, but what they do have is yet another stonker of a pop album, skating on the
edge of more musical territories than Prince.
9/10 CM
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Johnny Borrell’s rockers return with the traditionally career-defining third album, so how far
have they come in four years?
The album begins with the epic ‘Wire to Wire’- a piano-driven ballad which does all the usual Razorlight tricks- soft,
melodic vocals into a power-ballad esque burst. It should actually slot
straight into the Razorlight
‘Greatest Hits’ and the
lyrics aren’t as silly as some Borrell
efforts...
This album speaks mostly of London, citing many references to areas, spearheaded
by the auto-biographical
‘North London Trash’. Referencing to the subject of the song as the aforementioned garbage, the lyrics take a sadly familiar simplistic twist as
Borrell howls:
“I’ve got a hot-bodied girlfriend/I’ve got a wallet full of cash/I’m just north London trash.”
Borrell’s distaste for the media is metaphorically addressed in ‘You and the Rest’ in which he sings of paranoia and being unsure of “what is real”. Spun over a crude bassline and a progressive drumbeat. It’s a decent enough track but it’s just disappointing.
‘Stinger’ is another track of a failed relationship with a deep bass-line encompassing a
moody atmosphere as Borrell sings of his lake of respect and love. And what
might have been a half-decent effort is again ruined by some truly daft
inclusion of Borrel declaring the Stinger is a bitch- just needless and makes
the song less believable.
Fans of Razorlight will be quietly unhappy with this album as there is no gem
like
‘Golden Touch’, ‘America’ or ‘Somewhere Else’, indeed it’s the ghosts of such classics that haunt this album as it tries far too hard to
be something special.
‘Burberry Blue Eyes’ being the perfect example of a song that seems to be going somewhere promising,
but just never makes it.
‘Tabloid Lover’ sounds like a Morrissey number early on with an athemic build-up. It features a
catchy hook, some nice bridges and fast-and-furious lyrical delivery as it
almost convinces you that this could be the one. This time directly attacking
the media, the words are actually quite clever in many parts and it is a
likeable track. But that epic guitar solo never really comes to support the
change of pace that laid down such good groundwork.
‘Monster Boots’ is another similarly unpredictable one featuring some serious vocal straining
by Borrell as he screams with the pain of a lost lover. It
’s very emotive and is quite likable once it gets in full swing. It’s hard to deny its qualities as a good song but it just tries to be too many
different parts in just one song, which weakens it.
So overall we really were hoping for a little bit more, and while there are
memorable tracks on there you just can
’t help feeling that the band have not reached their full potential. 6.5/10 CM
Key Tracks- ‘Turn to Stone’, ‘The Promise’, ‘Love is Pain’, ‘The Loving Kind’, ‘Untouchable’
Key Tracks- ‘Wire to Wire’, ‘Monster Boots’, ‘Tabloid Lover’
(c) ChrisOnline.biz 2008
