Maybe they all need a good shag to wake them up.
Maybe they all need a good shag to wake them up.
Levy – Levy
Ahh the opening track… Rotten Love; just get this LP for the opening track, surely the greatest slice of bitter-sweet teenage Gothic moping ever served up on record. Its all about a lad falling out of love, going to mopey Goth parties, joss sticks and patchouli oil. Its fab fab fab. And it possesses a beautiful guitar-drenched chorus.
The rest just doesn’t come close, but for all that its okay stuff, filled with teen issues like nicking girlfriends and school. This lot have been playing very close attention to their Jesus and Mary Chain records; the opening guitar refrain on Matthew is somewhat familiar… There’s a fair portion of Belle and Sebastian in there too. On The Dance Floor is a very ponderous number that never seems to get out of second gear, whereas In The Woods is another low key and angsty boy-girl dilemma replete with piano and twangy guitar parts.
Rector Sweet is another strum-along ditty about love with a nice Moscow Olympics guitar sound. There’s a good song here, I’d just like the mix to be more thought through. Wednesday is a maudlin acoustic number about the death of a friend… come on lads, cheer up. This is a pop record. Do teenagers really have so much angst? See Saw is more like it, a bit of thump, the mood seems to be lightening a bit because Rivka is similarly jaunty in tone, but hey, it’s still about the labyrinthine complexity of teenage relationships. You know, maybe Aldous Huxley was right about sex – but that’s another story altogether… The final number, Sunday School as its title suggests, is a winsome number, set over a jangly guitar part. I quite like this one. It has a tad more bite about it.
So, in conclusion? Possibly the best and most misleading opening track this twelvemonth. Promise-a-plenty, but overly maudlin. Maybe they all need a good shag to wake them up.
Words: Richard Foster.