Famous First Words
by Viva Brother

From MadhattanJack 01/07/2026 08:04 | #312495

Every once in a while (okay, actually every week or so) someone comes along and tries to revive and old genre. Usually it's something from back in the 60s or 70s — psychedelia, garage rock, disco, bubblegum pop — but for these guys it was Britpop, and in 2011 it was just too soon. All the Britpop bands were still around, still touring and making records. So the critics apparently hated them, and to be fair, it's not an especially good album. It actually sounds like a collection of singles. There isn't much variety, and ultimately it comes across as a kind of pastiche (released the same year as the first Beady Eye album, just to add insult to injury). At the same time, if you listen to a song like track 5 ("Electric Daydream") by itself, you'd probably say to yourself, "this is actually quite good, so why haven't I head of these guys before?" The reason is because critics noticed that every song on the album has essentially that same tempo, the same dynamics, the same aggressive vocal sneer and guitar sound, the same everything — "Electric Daydream" just happens to have a better hook than the others. But if you don't mind that, and if you just like Britpop and want to hear more of it, maybe you'll really like this album — indeed, there were plenty of albums released when Britpop was The Current Big Thing that were a lot worse than this. (I'm just sayin'. I bought several myself.) (Edited)