The Loves - Technicolour
February 27th 2007 17:32
The Loves – Technicolour (Fortuna POP!)
There's an awful lot to love about the Loves. They've had an admirably ramshackle career thus far, cycling members like most people go through toothbrushes and harbouring a slightly aggressive dictatorial disposition on the part of leader Simon Love. But this doesn't change the fact that, despite mass critical fawning, they've yet to start producing the classic pop they emulate so closely. The opening sprawl of 'Je T'aime, Baby', for example, is sweet enough, but never gains enough momentum to be as big as it should. Sadly, (and quite usefully for journalistic purposes) this forms an adequate metaphor for the remainder of the record.
While everything functions nicely like The Monkees conducting a séance, it all smacks a little too much of pastiche. Not that there's a great deal inherently wrong with pastiche, Technicolour just borrows rather more heavily than most, and not in a way that makes you think "cripes, I wish I'd had the ingenious foresight to latch onto that cool thing before anyone else did…". The quotation on the CD's back cover from Rita Lee reads: "We've heard it all and we've used it all". This much is evident, but simply borrowing words from a Brazilian protest singer does not make this entirely acceptable.
The nasal jangle of single 'Xs and Os' will arouse the kind of middle-aged male single pop music fan we all know and love (he looks rather like Marc Radcliffe, doesn't he?), but there is nothing about it likely to afford it classic status in the way its been hoo-ha'd in the press. Similar things could be said about large portions of this album, but it'd just get tedious. In principle there is nothing bad about this album. It's got impeccable heritage and well-picked influences, it's got pop know-how, it's got kitsch vocals, it's got the tremendous bonus of a front-man that's a complete tosser, and a load of other loveable qualities too. So why is it so difficult to love?
Simply, these factors rub against one another in a quite uncomfortable way. When Simon Love sneers his smarmy way through a song, you feel like Mick Jagger told him how to do it five minutes before it started. When you hear a cheeky lick of guitar borrowing from the jangles of Roy Wood, you feel that it wouldn’t be happening unless people knew exactly where it had come from. When the doe-eyed boy-girl vocals kick in at various points, you feel The Loves asserting their "it's OK to love pop" credentials on an audience that already knows it's OK to love pop. It is, for all its charms, a slightly unnatural record.
'Technicolour' has been out since earlier this month. PM is a slowcoach and a der-brain for not reviewing sooner. Here's where you can get it, sirs. And here's where you can hear some pop songs.
There's an awful lot to love about the Loves. They've had an admirably ramshackle career thus far, cycling members like most people go through toothbrushes and harbouring a slightly aggressive dictatorial disposition on the part of leader Simon Love. But this doesn't change the fact that, despite mass critical fawning, they've yet to start producing the classic pop they emulate so closely. The opening sprawl of 'Je T'aime, Baby', for example, is sweet enough, but never gains enough momentum to be as big as it should. Sadly, (and quite usefully for journalistic purposes) this forms an adequate metaphor for the remainder of the record.
While everything functions nicely like The Monkees conducting a séance, it all smacks a little too much of pastiche. Not that there's a great deal inherently wrong with pastiche, Technicolour just borrows rather more heavily than most, and not in a way that makes you think "cripes, I wish I'd had the ingenious foresight to latch onto that cool thing before anyone else did…". The quotation on the CD's back cover from Rita Lee reads: "We've heard it all and we've used it all". This much is evident, but simply borrowing words from a Brazilian protest singer does not make this entirely acceptable.
The nasal jangle of single 'Xs and Os' will arouse the kind of middle-aged male single pop music fan we all know and love (he looks rather like Marc Radcliffe, doesn't he?), but there is nothing about it likely to afford it classic status in the way its been hoo-ha'd in the press. Similar things could be said about large portions of this album, but it'd just get tedious. In principle there is nothing bad about this album. It's got impeccable heritage and well-picked influences, it's got pop know-how, it's got kitsch vocals, it's got the tremendous bonus of a front-man that's a complete tosser, and a load of other loveable qualities too. So why is it so difficult to love?
Simply, these factors rub against one another in a quite uncomfortable way. When Simon Love sneers his smarmy way through a song, you feel like Mick Jagger told him how to do it five minutes before it started. When you hear a cheeky lick of guitar borrowing from the jangles of Roy Wood, you feel that it wouldn’t be happening unless people knew exactly where it had come from. When the doe-eyed boy-girl vocals kick in at various points, you feel The Loves asserting their "it's OK to love pop" credentials on an audience that already knows it's OK to love pop. It is, for all its charms, a slightly unnatural record.
'Technicolour' has been out since earlier this month. PM is a slowcoach and a der-brain for not reviewing sooner. Here's where you can get it, sirs. And here's where you can hear some pop songs.
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