Hailing from Swindon, home of the great XTC, BRITISH BEEF come surrounded by buzz, having recently won the BBC Radio 1Best Unsigned Act award. Wonderful, thinks your reviewer, until he reads the small print where he discovers in the press blurb that BB have been described as "Blink 182 with Slash on guitar." Jesus. Talk about decimating your hopes in one fell swoop.
Thankfully, the record itself doesn't quite plumb the depths that comparison sinks to in my mind anyway. But it's nothing that special either. It's loud, racing, weirdly authentic-sounding, college-busting American Emo-core, so - if you know me - you'll not be too surprised to know that I'm not liable to rate that too much. Nonetheless, this is still preferable to the usual whiny pillocks such as my favourite Aunt Sallies such as Jimmy Eat World, Less than Jake, and - yes - Blink 182 themselves.
So that's the 'damned with faint praise' bit covered with alacrity, then. For some reason, "Without Me" comes with (ooh! subversive!) a "Dirty" version as well, though one can only assume it's because of the line "Our love fucks with my head" that's apparently been inserted to, like, get a reaction. Oh well. Other than that, the two versions appear identical.
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Still, we can forgive that if we stretch a point, but not the derivative and whiny breakneck-a-thon of the closing "No, I Don't Want Another Joint", where the lads prove they're the six stone weaklings we suspected all along and admit they can't handle their drugs. Pah! You'd be knackered if Lemmy moved in next door then, eh, fellas?
British Beef, then, make a big, radio-hugging emo-core sound and will no doubt do well, especially as they've already been out and about sharing stages with the likes of Babyshambles, The Mooney Suzuki and Good Charlotte. But, as yet anyway, they don't cut the mustard for this reviewer. Hold the Yorkshire Puddings, please.
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