Music

Widescreen rock, popular and ubiquitous as it is, should have its own rack in HMV by now. We’re certainly not too far away from festival bills drawn exclusively from widescreen big-hitters like U2, Coldplay, Snow Patrol, Keane and The Killers. Or magazines read by 50-quid-men running ‘How to buy…’ features on this chart-conquering sound. This second album from the Birmingham gloom-mongers, however, would number among those to avoid.


Made with widescreen rock producer du jour Garret Lee (U2, Snow Patrol, Bloc Party, Vega 4…) it’s as you’d expect: an icy monolith of top-of-the-fretboard chords so constant that guitarist Chris Urbanowicz must suffer from RSI. The odd ballad aside, it’s a seriously one-paced affair, not helped at all by Tom Smith’s monotonous voice. His grey tone lacks what’s needed to turn the band’s A-level melancholia and mortality issues into something euphoric or life-affirming. As it stands, this album would have even the ‘Big Brother’ twins reaching for the Xanax.

It also doesn’t help that this, even more than first album ‘The Back Room’, violently mugs Interpol for so much of its inspiration; how will they fare when the increasingly massive kings of glumrock return with their own album in July? Interestingly, self-styled average-wide-band Athlete are also back soon. Interesting, because Editors’ ‘When Anger Shows’ sounds just like Athlete’s ‘Wires’, but has the dubious distinction of making even that turgid workout sound thrilling.