Playlouder - Music is the Network

I know very little about Liverpool. I don't know anybody from Liverpool, I've never been to Liverpool; I think the closest I've got is Rhyl, which felt close enough. I know it's near Chester because it's 'back home' for half the characters in Hollyoaks. I know that Brookside was set there, and Merseybeat, that crap BBC cop show with fatlips Leslie Ash was set there, I know that it must be near the studios for a vast number of property delevopment shows because they seem to feature at least one dilapidated town house an episode, each. What I do know about Liverpool though, is that it's second only to Manchester in terms of how often the inescapable brilliance and undeniable genius of all aspects of the Liverpudlian music scene is just how god damn amazing and brilliant and totally fantastic the music scene is, was, and will forever be, is shovelled down my throat. Whilst this statement may have had resonance in say, 1965 when people were regularly asphixiated with the nauseaus bleating of Cilla, Gerry and obviously, the Fab. But Liverpool, what have you done for us lately?

The answer is evidently Eton Road. You know the ones, the boyband chances who peeped into the window of fame in series three of X Factor only to have it stolen by him and her and the other one. Eton Road were great, not least because in Anthony Hannah, a cartoon hybrid of Jaime Stewart from Xiu Xiu, Richey Edwards and a Pearl Jam fan circa 1992 who came not equipped with not one, but about eighteen equally ridiculous high pitched voices and camp squeals, they had one of the most baffling X Factor characters in it's frankly, pretty dry well. Despite having done precisely fuck-all since, it's welcome to see Liverpools sixteenth most famous 'Fab Four' are still making music, all be it a phenomenally pisspoor rendition of 'From Me to You' that sounds like Ricky Martin slamming his nuts in a car door. More excitingly is discovering Anthony, having left Eton Road to forge a solo career, has been given his own track; an utterly ludicrous and delightfully shoddy blast through Frankie Goes to Hollywood's 'Relax' in which, obviously knowing the original is as good as untouchable, prances around a backing track created cearly below the age of consent, but provides ample breathing room for Hannah to caterwaul and yell. The last fifteen seconds are a complete mess not a million miles from his Xiu Xiu lookalike, with faux Trevor Horn production tossed in, mind.

The concept is simple: super smashing great acts from Liverpool right here, right now, tackle covers of famous Liverpool number one hits, including no less than ten Beatles covers. If the concept is simple however, the execution is a whole world or hard work. But whilst whimsical incompetence like China Crisis doing Michael Holliday's 'Starry Eyes' are effortlessly forgettable, ploughing through Scaffold covering 'Three Lions' (rejoice, a novelty band covering a novelty song), a 'hilarious' reworking called 'Three Shirts on a Line' which manages to spell 'Lightning Seeds' wrong on the CD sleeve, presumable at Ian Broudie's insistance. Elsewhere, Sonia has decided to revive her career as one of those man-bating lesbian-sex-symbols like Pink, as her bonkers take on 'She Loves You' is so pointlessly similar to Kelly Clarkson's 'Since U Been Gone' it's difficult to tell when the one finishes, and the other starts. There's also 'Paperback Writer' by Digsy and the Sums, which sadly isn't the fictional Sum 41 band from the 'Still Waiting' video, but a bunch of pub rock bores backing the ex-Smaller singer on probably the worst thing here.

It's not all bad though, these things never are if you persevere. OMD's version of Atomic Kitten's 'Whole Again', is rather predictably, completely brilliant, which is inevitable as Andy Mcluskey wrote the bloody thing in the first place; what's exciting in the wake of last years hoo-ha over the re-release of 'Architecture and Morality', how eerily the bleeps and bops of this, sits next to the likes of Maid of Orleans like there was never a twenty five year gap. It also rocks, which the original didn't. Atomic Kitten don't get glossed over here though, Liz McClarnon squirts out a pathetic cover of 'Imagine' and Natasha Hamilton churns no less than two worthless Cilla Black covers. Whoever hunted down Ian McNabb from the Icicle works to nail a slight, but worthy cover of Lennons 'Woman' deserves at least a finders fee, and it sickens to say it, but The Farm doing 'Needles and the Pins' is alright too, which it has no right to be.

The rest is a mess of being either too dull (Shack), too 'clever' (Thea Gilmore) or too staggeringly shit (The Real People's breathtakingly bad reinterpretation of 'Eleanor Rigby' with crowbarred references to 'lonely people in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Pakistan', which I refuse to believe even sounded good on paper. It's quite an experience, but at 21 tracks, 10 of which are sure-fire shite, it's pointless, and has zip-all chance of shifting units outside Liverpool itself. Reassuringly nonsense, but it's worth investigating OMD bringing 'Whole Again' back to where it belongs; the pretentious early 80s.