Review:
'Mr Love and Justice'
'Homeground'
- Label: 'Vanity Records / cdbaby.com'
- Genre: 'Pop'
- Release Date: 'JULY 2004'- Catalogue No: 'VRCD004'
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Our Rating:
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Steve Cox, Andy Jones and Chris Anniss have a kind of folk pop band here. They are beautifully behaved and tentatively concerned about environmental decay and the loss of rural values. And stuff.
They play sweetly and sometimes inventively. Their songs are Laura Ashley inspired clones of some gentle thoughts that nobody made famous in the early seventies when FAIRPORT CONVENTION, STEELEYE SPAN and (eventually) THE OYSTERBAND ran away with all the best ideas.
The twelve tracks have a gently massaging lightness and smoothness about them. There are hints of pop jazz and country rock in songs like "Tumbleweed", that could come from half remembered chunks of THE EAGLES. It’s the kind of stuff that music fans who can play guitar like to play at home, dreaming about the possibility that they could have contended.
For those like you and I, dear reader, who have dedicated a life to consuming vast quantities of any kind of rough brew from any musical jug we could find this sounds, well, insipid. No fizz, no kick, no aftertaste or evocative esther to tease the last remaining edges of what was once a fine palette. It's dull without being dishwater. I can think of people who will find this agreeable and romantic and close to their suburban dreams of a less ugly world. They're nice people who don't put music in the centre of their cultural world.
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Lyrically "Homeground" plods through randomly chosen phrases from the Gordon Fraser School of rhyming. There are noble intentions there, but they stay locked in through lack of genuine writing talent. "Ten bottles on your wall / One by one they will surely fall / Down to the ground / And without a sound" is the standard we're talking about here.
The band's own label name "Vanity Records" is too close to the truth. Everyone used to have a novel in them. Now it’s a CD. And the cruel truth is that most of those novels and most of thse CDs will never reach a wider audience. Even the good ones, sometimes the brilliant ones, don't either. But the ordinarily competent just don’t stand a chance. And I guess this would count as ordinarily competent. Its fame will spread by personal recommendation one gig at a time.
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author: Sam Saunders
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Ah bless! We seem to have an NME wannabe on our hands do we not dear reader? The spit of Charles Shaar Murray lives on. Fret not, hip young gunslinger, not shaving but frowning, one day those testicles will drop. You will not forever need to massage your own ego with such "smarter than you", "heard more than you", "love music more than you" invective. Some grown-ups have heard "wickedly achieved pop songs" here, a "hand made in the country’ feel that brings the best out of the acoustic sound", "something unique and refreshing and often mo...shortened comments
------------- Author: moonraker
14 August 2004
Ah bless! Do we have an NME wannabe on our hands dear reader? The spit of Charles Shaar Murray lives on. Fret not, hip young gunslinger, not shaving but frowning, one day those testicles will drop. You will not forever need to massage your own ego with such invective. Some grown-ups have heard here something "unique, refreshing and often moving" something "mature, educated and enjoyable" Those with open minds and ears may find more here than our friend in the North. All is vanity. With love.
------------- Author: moonraker
14 August 2004
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Homeground
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