Crossing the Red Sea – The Adverts
Listening to this album, it’s a mix of the expected and unexpected. Whilst I like to try to treat every poster’s nomination with respect and listen with due diligence, I always have an initial gut reaction that the current week’s album is going to be good or bad.
A punk band with an album from 1978 registered an “urgh!” from my gut, but listening to Crossing the Red Sea by The Adverts was a better experience than I expected.
The album is refreshingly free from gimmicks – it’s just a guitar album with a band giving it their all. There were aspects of it that I didn’t like, and the good and the bad is nicely exemplified by “Bored Teenagers” – some feisty guitar and even a short, unexpected break near the end where the bass and drums take over. This shows a little bit of thought – bit on the flipside, the chorus is more than a little repetitive.
The funny thing is, whilst the sound of the guitar on this album is much more up my street than those on the Jimmy East World album, it feels like the songs on last week’s effort were better thought out and had a structure. The songs on Crossing the Red Sea have a ramshackle approach which only sometimes works for me.
For the most part, the vocals remain on the acceptable side of a snarl. Coatigan said that punk can sometimes feel "a touch up its own arse", and I absolutely agree – this is what puts me off it most of all. Funnily enough, this was the feeling I got on “Gary Gilmore’s Eyes” more than any other song here, which is probably why it was so popular with punks!
“Bombsite Boy” does tread similar territory – after a start that is both slug-like and weird in equal measures, it breaks out into the standard punk template of shouty cockney-style chorus which repeats. But to be fair, for the most part, this album avoids the obvious punk approach.
Shame about the shouty bits in “No Time to Be 21” – there’s some guitar in this that reminds me of early Midnight Oil. Now if only they had a vocalist with the charisma of Peter Garrett
“Safety in Numbers” is a good track. I enjoyed the thrumming bass through the verse running into the anthemic chorus and the chord changes that come with it.
I’m not likely to listen to this again, but for some decent guitar parts, and the fact that it exceeded my expectations, I’m going for 6/10.