It’s happened again…
Unfortunately, very few things live up to their hype, and that includes bands you were convinced had become firm favourites. This even worse in the case when most of the hype has been your own doing and not just forced on you by the music media. Take Air Traffic, for example; last year, when all I’d heard of them was a couple of great fun singles, I was convinced they were going to blow me away with an incredibly addictive album, one that I’d still be listening to months down the line. Sadly, that’s not what they did. Long before the release of ‘Fractured Life’ I began to realise that Shooting Star signalled an extremely unwelcome Coldplay/Snow Patrol route that was not what I had originally expected of them.
I should of expected it to happen again as it’s just unavoidable; no matter how selective you are in your musical tastes, every once in a while a disappointing album will sneak its way into your record collection. I’ll not go into too much detail but a couple of examples of this are Reverend and the Makers’ ‘The State of Things’ and ‘A Guide To Love, Loss and Desperation’ by the Wombats. For one reason or another, I had high expectations of these albums and they both let me down.
Why? Well, that always depends on the album but I suspect for the Wombats it was a combination of the fact that I’d heard most of the songs before and that their super-happy songs can only be handled in small doses. After listening all the way through their album, I get the urge to go and listen to the most depressing and awful thing I can find. Conveniently, this would probably provide a use for ‘The State of Things’, or even the Chemical Brothers’ latest album. Alternatively, I could just listen to white noise.
Anyway, if I hadn’t been out and bought the Wombats’ album a couple of weeks ago, I’d never have had to write this post. At least I’ve written a post, though, as they’ve been a bit thin on the ground of late. I did intend this blog to be a bit more sporadic but never wanted to allow it to become a one-post-per-week job. Ah well, I’ll see what I can do.
