You've heard of Nizlopi before. If I say 'JCB Song' you're either going to smile with recognition, or sneer in the same way I did. But it would be wrong to write off a band because of their big hit – especially when there are so many more reasons here to warrant no further interest.
Track one of the album is called 'Tape Spooling...' - it's six seconds long and is literally the sound of a tape spooling. This is as good as the album gets. From hereon in, it's all rather sanctimonious and tedious.
'Start Beginning' feels like it could turn into yet another cover of 'Big Yellow Taxi' at any moment. A small choir is employed in the latter parts of the tune, harking back to the songs on Michael Jackson's 'Dangerous' that were a little too worthy to leave you feeling comfortable. The sad thing is that you apply the same comment to next track 'I'm Alive Again.' The general sound is acoustic with a few tribal percussions running through the background.
This is music made for youth workers – the messages are easy, and more importantly, they are obvious. “I'm celebrating the fact that we aren't born one way, it's well cool with me if you turn out to be gay.” And it's not tongue in cheek. It's sung with too much perceived soul to be a joke. There's more about how people are starving and how the world is an unjustified place, but if we all unite then it'll be okay eventually. It's a message we've all heard before, and one we've really grown out of. This isn't how you tackle problems – nothing is being challenged by these themes. There is more depth in a high school assembly.
Nizlopi are one of those bands you do a google image search on to make sure that they are white people making a really bad job at covering black music. And that is what they are – and it does feel staged. It's probably supposed to be edgy and innovative, but then some people believed that of Del Amitri as well. This sounds like a soundtrack to a disney movie, all I can picture during the happy smarmy chorus' are a man at the front of a classroom with shades on playing his guitar, tapping his leg and shaking his head wildly trying to get the kids to join in. It is easy to start picturing scenes from the lion king on some tracks especially on 'Flooded Quarry', where we're called to show “how brave we really are.” Over and over again.
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“This holding pattern that this culture's in, we all know the world is dying. And the people in charge they know it too. That's why they stole Iraq's oil.” This is one of the many tried and tested sentiments from 'Feel Inside.' Yet another song that could turn into Big Yellow Taxi, this time with a hint of rapping. There are various instruments employed across the album, but variety alone is not enough to make an album engaging. You have to keep returning to the voice – Luke Concannon has clearly been trained to sing – and can hold a tune. But it feels like staged soul, and thus any feeling is forcibly removed from it.
It's hard to imagine how anyone could look at the terrible things that happen in the world and come up with this. There's less depth to the whole experiment than a Newsround report on the budget. As an album it has been designed to inspire – but who could honestly say that this album makes them think? The war was unjust, climate change is a worry – but even your average Daily Star reader knows that these days. It's akin to Madonna parading Africans around the stage in order to look like a genuinely caring person.
So sickly that it makes you want to kick a guide dog just to redress the balance.
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