Playlouder - Music is the Network

Having finally got a copy of Glasvegas’ eponymous LP I can’t help but wonder if I’ve received the same record as everybody else, or if this is some elaborate hoax.

This is an underwhelming album. What with the hype, (which I have personally contributed to on many occasions on the strength of the few demos), it feels like I’ve been wrestling with a large and unseen beast at the end of a fishing line, only to land a muscular but unpalatable eel at the end of a hard afternoon’s struggle. And I was hoping for a much tastier fish, that might actually feed my family.

What’s the problem then? ‘Geraldine’ lives up to promise of the demo, and is a simplistic but hard-hitting anthem of emotional depth and comes from a pretty unique angle. ‘Go Square Go’ is a raucous shout-along worthy of any football terrace. ‘Flowers and Football Tops’ is a powerful, if slightly overwrought, opener, and 'It’s My Own Cheating Heart…’ best showcases their style: awash with reverb, and full of lyrical twists and turns and blah blah blah.

I’ll not get into the Spector and Mary Chain schtick or bore you with non-anecdotes about how visionary (or regressive depending on your P.O.V.) Alan McGee still is.

What I will do is highlight the failings of this debut, which few seem to have opened their ears to: firstly, it suffers from having all the best tracks released before, some in much better incarnations. It reminds me of The Darkness' 'Permission to Land' in that it inevitably contains few surprises, and most of those not nice ones. Secondly, it’s incredibly samey, and the quality of songwriting is not high enough to pull this off. ‘Lonesome Swan’ is a b-side at best. The same can be said for ‘Polmont on My Mind’ or ‘Ice Cream Van’.

‘I’m Gonna Get Stabbed’ is a good example of editorial control not exerted. It’s an embarrassingly unprofound, stewing exploration of violence over a cheap and unimaginative lifting from Beethoven (the only bit of the album not lifted from the Jesus and Mary Chain to be fair…) It echoes the crappy pseudo-profound Van Gogh-aping hash of an album cover.

Worst of all is the rerecording of ‘Daddy’s Gone’, which for its subtle polishing and production has lost all that made it so appealing and so affecting when first I heard its unexpectedly emotional howlings in amongst the Wombats and Pigeon Detectives of BBC 6Music. 

It’s amazing how much can be lost from the simple power of such songs by the fiddlings of a few knobs - here it ends up sounding like a shit Suede song.

Most of the album is over by track three, and pretty much all of it by track five. This is not the return of rock ‘n’ roll: this is average retro rock; this is a botched job by musical potboilers; this is a really rather disappointing debut by a promising band.

Nine out of ten in the NME says it all; like most of us, they probably had their review written ages before they heard it. It’s just a shame, if not a surprise, that they like many others were not ready to eat their words.