There was an absolute glut of bands from Liverpool in this era. This sounds a bit weaker than I remember it and to some degree I can see why they never quite made it, but then equally why did a band like say China Crisis do better than them, maybe a bit more hooky but also more formulaic too?
However, it does have multiple redeeming features the primary one being that, unlike some of their contemporaries, they make an effort to do something interesting and though it sometimes skates close to being a bit sixth form pretentious it doesn’t smack of deliberately being all style and no substance. You’re making yourself a bit of a hostage to fortune by citing Love and Burt Bacharach as your influences and though it falls short of those very high bars you can hear what they’re trying to do and fair play to them for trying.
I think Rob nailed it by saying there’s lots of good moments without ever coming together in a really compelling set of songs. “Unless” is probably emblematic of this to me in that it has lots of these very nice moments without quite nailing it completely as a song. I think that impression comes because they are trying to pack in too many thoughts or moments into the songs without necessarily yet having the song writing ability/experience to edit them down or piece them together well enough; Abergele Next Time being another example. Similarly, the pans that open Crazier smacks a bit of ‘we haven’t had steel pans’ yet and the lyric sort of support its so…
It’s frustrating because when they do edit their ideas down even slightly like on songs such as Faithful Pillow Parts1/ 2 it works very well. You can imagine the slightly younger Stuart Staples hearing that and tucking it away for future reference with Tindersticks. You’ll Start a War is another example, write a catchy song and then just add in a few brass embellishments and you get one of the better tracks.
Though not musically similar, it reminded me a bit of their fellow scouser Thomas Lang in that it might be a bit gauche but it’s not simply posturing and whether it managed to fully deliver or not it’s praiseworthy for the trying and probably deserved a bit better than it did (though unlike Pale Fountains, the 80's parody production on Lang's music is borderline unforgiveable).
I'm not familiar with Mick Head's subsequent work, but reading shackattack's post I might have a listen because it needs to be borne in mind this was a first album and you can see how a less is more approach that comes with more experience might mean things could turn out nicely.
After the excellent results this weekend, they would have got a benevolent 7/10 but BH posted that video so it’s going to be a more realistic 6.5/10 and an acknowledgement that far worse than them managed to get bigger careers.
