Saturday 12 April 2008

RAZORLIGHT – IN THE MORNING (MERCURY/VERTIGO)


RAZORLIGHT – IN THE MORNING (MERCURY/VERTIGO)

This record is such a stinking piece of shit.  It represents everything that is wrong with modern guitar music and what is sold to youth culture and indie rock.  The band itself is bad enough, a real limp dick proposition playing guitars that feed so low down the mix they are barely present.  It is a gesture that seems as if the band is almost frightened of their instruments as all focus is put onto the words of the wiggling frontman that is saying absolutely nothing at all.  Briefly I heard this band and Johnny Borrell mentioned in the same breath as Kurt Cobain.  And briefly I became depressed knowing that all was lost as a result.

So now, here we have this: “In The Morning”.  Over the years Oasis may have stolen wholesale from The Beatles, Kasabian have tried to be everyone and Coldplay turned into Level 42 but no degree of pinching was ever as flagrant as this.  “In The Morning” is musically an unofficial three-minute version of “Marquee Moon” by Television.

What do I care?  Well, probably because people know this and do not know and acknowledge the original.  These "cool licks" that people are eating up, they are stolen goods.  And this is a band dining off the royalties.  There needs to be justice.

Razorlight is a band that is so utterly fucking shit.  Taken from their second album, this single was released as a seven-inch and two CD singles.  That means somewhere; some poor fucker kids are buying this three times on top of wasting their parents’ money on the album as well.  This is how economy fails, how nations go bankrupt.  Why do people buy inferior products, cheap (and not so cheap) knock offs without question?  Why do people just roll over and die?  This is modern youth culture.  And Razorlight has to be held responsible to some degree.  They serve no purpose.

Do I really need to listen to this song again to review it?  OK, first let me do so without music.  Reading the lyrics, the words are quite removed from those of Tom Verlaine.  The first line goes “I don’t know what I’m doin’ wrong”.  Ripping off Television perhaps?  “The songs on the radio sound the same, everybody just looks the same” – take a look in the fucking mirror!

However things perk up for the boy: “last night was so much fun”.  Suddenly it seems he realised he is rich and managed to snag some sex (“now your sheets are dirty”).  That or he shit the bed, which is a plausible theory backed up by his next question: “remember when you were young”.  Then menacingly he goes on about not “remembering a thing in the morning”.  Is this suddenly a song about blacking out?

Eventually the lyrics fully turn to mush as the line “are you really gonna do it this time?” appears uttered twenty times (according to the lyric sheet I am reading off the internet).  Who this guy, fucking Rain Man?

On that note let me take this to the MTV focused video.  It begins in a dead room and the drummer taking his seat behind the kit.  I once showed this guy where the toilet was at a place where I worked but that’s another story.  With that the music begins with the stolen trademark (should be trademarked) “Marquee Moon” noodle.  Then comes the vacant expression of a gormless tool.  Hello Mr Lead Singer with your misguided enthusiasm.  From here blankets are lifted to reveal further blank embodiment and a dead social club inhabited by zombies.  Even the band acknowledges this is its advance.  Then arrives the “Marquee Moon” breakdown/bridge followed by more Verline-esqe noodling until it all ends with the band making out like crap bandits, shysters to the end.

If music is to ever recover, ever crawl out its current slump, shit such as this must be exterminated.

Also the more gifted but less recognised Built To Spill already did a far superior single called “In The Morning”.  Can’t this band even come up with original song titles?

And finally with two major labels attached to the sleeve: THIS BAND IS AND NEVER WAS INDIE!

Thesaurus moment: fraud.

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