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Review: 'BARTLEY, JOCK'
'ECONOMY / INSATIABLE'   

-  Label: 'Winged Horse Records'
-  Genre: 'Rock' -  Release Date: 'October 2008'

Our Rating:
If nothing else this doubled A-sided single proves how hard it is to write songs in direct response to topical affairs.

Keeping things too general runs the risk of trying to be all things to all listeners; being too specific means that songs rapidly sound banal and dated.

Jock Bartley, lead guitarist of veteran US rockers Firewall, gamely seeks to steer a middle course through the mire of credit crunch related issues but winds up sounding at a loss to know where and how to direct his rage.

His press pack is at pains to emphasise how his lyrics contain humour and tongue in cheek asides which frankly I found hard to identify. His irrefutable observations on that "the economy is at an all time low" and "the fortunate few are getting rich" don't strike me as written while in a particularly jokey mood.

'Insatiable' points the finger even more directly at the "gluttons" and "fat economists" who have brought about the financial catastrophe yet concludes lamely that "we the people deserve much better - I hope the wind of change starts blowing soon"   

It'll take more than a couple of ZZ Top style boogies to change the world and Bartley's simplistic words don't carry any political weight or express any genuine anger.
  author: Martin Raybould

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BARTLEY, JOCK - ECONOMY / INSATIABLE