Razorlight - Up All Night. Interscope.
Words | 25/08/2004 at 04:41:21
I would like, if I could, to line the members of Razorlight up against a wall and make scary machine guns noises at them until they promised, whimpering, to STOP. Well, okay, I wouldnt exactly make scary machine gun noises at them. Im a girl. Im physically incapable of making that rat-at-tat-tat-tat noise that every single boy in the world even the wussy ones - seems able to make. Even with practice, the best noise I can muster is a sort of tfffpppppfffffffft sound. Which, if Im being honest doesnt sound like any kind of gun at all. But anyway, I would point a machine gun-like finger at Razorlight and make my tfffpppppfffffffft noise, possibly sending a soft mist of spit flying towards their persons in the process.
Its not that theyve actually committed a truly heinous crime. Its just that I really didnt want to have to talk about The Libertines in this review. Or whisper The Strokes. It makes me seem lazy for one thing. And its boring, for another. But theyve forced my hand and theres no way around it. Razorlight sound a hell of a lot like both bands. And mimicking ones contemporaries so blatantly warrants a certain amount of finger-gunning in my book.
Razorlights singer and songsmith Johnny Borrell an ex-Libertine, in fact sounds tired of life. The leeches living off the guest list, the bullshitting backstage, the late nights. You only need to read the track listing to get a sense of the themes running through the album: Rock n Roll Lies, Vice, Up All Night, Leave Me Alone. And yet, strangely enough, this is Razorlights debut album. Its hard to imagine quite how drained he will feel after a world tour and another sit-down in the studio. I fear the arrival of their second album already.
Now its entirely probable that Borrell lives the life he sings about surrounded by the Shoreditch hipsters, the fuck-ups, the substance abuse and the late nights spent in shitty bars and venues in London town he name-checks Dalston on one of the tracks for a bit of East End grit. So why on earth does it sound so false and contrived? Borrell cops a kind of louche, Lou Reed crossed with Jarvis Cocker stance on most of the record, with a little ennui borrowed from Julian Casablancas thrown in for good measure. However his theatrical and oftentimes silly phrasing is his undoing. There are some truly awful lyrics to be found on Up All Night, starting unfortunately - with the very first line of the opening track. Oh when did you decide/To start living like a suicide? he blusters on Leave Me Alone. Or, on Vice, featuring the ludicrous line Where is the wind/that strips away our sins? which honestly wouldnt sound out of place on a Darkness ballad.
There are, however, a couple of decent tracks on the album. Up All Night features a cleverly unadorned chorus followed by a loping time change and a burst of the toughest and most melodic guitar on the album. For a moment this feels like a real band and not like a fake band made up for an HBO series based on the true life tales of The Libertines. Stumble and Fall is another track that I mightnt be able to resist shaking my asymmetrical haircut to if I had one with its punchy guitar work and thrashing drums. One can even forgive Borrells horrible delivery of the line And I get over the breaks pronounced buhhhhhhhreeaks! at the chorus. Ultimately though Razorlights reliance on overly familiar ideas and sounds can really only lead to one thing
tfffpppppfffffffft.
