July 28, 2008
“System of a Down are not breaking up. We’re just gonna do like Kiss and put out our own solo records”. That was what System guitarist Daron Malakian said in 2005 when he first mentioned his Scars on Broadway side project. And now there’s finally a debut long-player from SoB, it’s less one-man studio doodles and more of a fully-fledged band, featuring as it does System drummer John Dolmayan among others.
So while the “solo records” part of Malakian’s statement may not be correct, the Kiss comparisons could well be. His band produce the sort of powerchord-heavy FM-radio rock indicative of a childhood spent listening to Gene Simmons and co. There’s barely a track over three and a half minutes, with 128-second opener ‘Serious’ sounding as if it would sit comfortably on daytime Radio 1 and those “pretend-to-be-a-rockstar” computer games alike.
But it’s by no means a Fischer-Price attempt at playing rock music. It’s just that while System were at times progressive and political to the point of alienating their more casual listeners, this album keeps to the point with its sheer head-banging thrills. The occasional creepy vocal refrain (’Chemicals’), bit of pulsing synth (’Funny’) or even post-punk jangle (’Enemy’) attempts to give the record a layer of depth and intellect, though on the whole it remains accomplished but one dimensional, often verging on samey.
That barely matters though. Hey, this is the age of the iPod! And there are more than enough bite-sized chunks of downloadable rawk on here to keep you shuffling for weeks. But while the individual tracks are great, in its entirety this is an average album.
Scars on Broadway fans: you might also enjoy my reviews of KoRn and Slipknot.
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Album reviews, Music | Tagged: Entertainment, Music, System of a Down | 
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Posted by Jonathan Deamer
July 17, 2008
16th July @ Manchester Apollo
Seattle’s Death Cab for Cutie might just be four scruffy lads with a bit of dodgy facial hair, but they somehow exude a vibe of sheer Americana cool. Their first few songs alone name-check more US cities than a Jack Kerouac novel. So when singer Ben Gibbard announces “Oh Manchester, how we’ve missed you” shortly into the set, it’s difficult to know how much he really means it.
False humility or not, at first it seems Manchester really has missed them. The reception given to tracks like New Year can’t indicate anything else. Whereas on record it’s twee-and-whimsical college indie, in the live setting it becomes quite a powerful rock beast. But soon enough, such crowd-pleasing singalongs give way to dirgeful slow-burners and too many of the dreaded “here’s one from our new album”.
So while the front row obsessives mouth along to every word regardless, and the indier-than-thou hipsters murmur about how different it is from the band’s first album tour in 1998, the fair-weather fans are the real barometer of how entertaining this is. They may have only discovered Death Cab when the group soundtracked a repeat episode of The OC last week. But they know the truth: tonight is mostly boring, with the odd flash of melodic brilliance. And don’t let anyone – Death Cab diehard or muso snob – tell you otherwise.
3 Comments | Live reviews, Music | Tagged: Entertainment, Manchester | Permalink
Posted by Jonathan Deamer
July 6, 2008
It’s weird: Sugababes produce exciting, interesting shiny pop gems on record, but I hated them live, while Westlife’s albums are some of the dullest things known to man, yet their live show is pretty good. Never thought I’d end up becoming an expert in stadium pop shows… 
3rd July @ Liverpool Echo Arena
After they’re made to wait until 9:40 on a school night to see their heroes take to the stage, the mostly pre-teen audience can be forgiven for getting a bit restless. Some of the older members of the half-full Arena’s crowd have taken to booing the band before they even come on, such is their lateness.
When they’ve allowed their fans to get that upset, Sugababes are going to have to put on a show more crowd pleasing than a Beatles reunion to make up for it. The show they do put on, however, is more akin to a school assembly performance than a triumphant production by a girl band who’ve sold more records than The Supremes, Banarama and even Destiny’s Child.
From the opening four-on-the-floor club mix of ‘Hole In The Head’, the 3 ‘babes are upstaged both by their dancers and fantastic backing band. They give the same rehearsed sultry looks and pull the same wannabe-sexy moves for the show’s duration. They look bored, quite frankly. The musicians, meanwhile, are having a great time, keeping themselves entertained by dropping elements of The Who’s ‘Baba O’Reilly’ into ‘Push the Button’ and wigging out with some guitar histrionics on ‘Freak Like Me’.
Despite having some genuine pop classics in their repertoire, the trio manage to put on one of the most lacklustre and unnecessarily low key stadium show that can have ever been. Let’s hope it doesn’t put the younger audience members off gig-going forever though. Quality pop can be so much better than this.
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Posted by Jonathan Deamer
June 30, 2008
Not really my usual fare, is it? But a surprisingly good show seen in the course of writing another review for Orange.
29th June 2008 @ Echo Arena
As far as big pop events go, they don’t come much bigger, poppier or more eventful than this without the involvement of Bob Geldof or Nelson Mandela: the last show of a forty-million selling boyband’s 10th anniversary tour, on the opening night of Liverpool’s annual Summer Pops blowout, at the city’s spanking new Echo Arena.
The almost palpable anticipation is immediately justified when the lads come onstage wearing leather jackets and Aviators to a cacophony of rock guitars and a light show worthy of Pink Floyd. It’s clear this isn’t going to be a sat-on-stools, stand-up-for-the-key-change run through of the Irish boys’ ballad hits. Many of their fourteen number one singles are there of course, but there’s also a show-stopping selection of uptempo covers, from The Jacksons through to Robbie Williams via Kool & The Gang’s ‘Get Down On It’, with pyrotechnics that could probably be seen from Dublin.
The fact that these tracks form the gig’s centrepiece though serves almost as an admission of the chronic dullness of much of Westlife’s own material. This is further evidenced by a tedious acoustic mini-set of songs from last year’s Back Home album, which sees most of the reluctant dads and boyfriends in attendance head off for a Carling.
Despite this, and no matter how much they may pretend to begrudge accompanying their loved ones tonight, the dads and boyfriends will have enjoyed it really. From the final brace of ‘Swear It Again’ and ‘Flying Without Wings’, along with the requisite stadium spectacle and emoting, it’s clear that no matter how boring their records, Westlife put on a show that only a miserablist like Geldof himself could fail to like.
3 Comments | Live reviews, Music | Tagged: Entertainment, Liverpool, Music, Westlife | Permalink
Posted by Jonathan Deamer
June 24, 2008
A version of this originally published at Orange.co.uk, for whom I’m now writing.
Necessity is the mother of invention, according to some ancient Greek bloke. So does the complete lack of invention shown on Silent Cry mean that the last thing the world really needs is another album from the band who bought us ‘Buck Rogers’?
It’d be churlish to suggest that we’ve never needed the Welsh trio. Their early records helped fill a gaping Britrock void in the late 90s, and since 2001’s Echo Park they’ve unleashed a handful of mini pop-classics that sit beautifully alongside ‘Bohemian Like You’ and ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s on local radio stations across the land (admittedly, a back-handed compliment if ever there were one).
But the band’s sixth record abandons that joyous melodic sensibility in favour of a faux-anthemic Snow Patrol approach. Opening track and lead single ‘We Are The People’ is a directionless dirge, produced, dubbed and layered to within an inch of its life to hide a chronic lack of what those in the music biz call ‘bollocks’. And while ‘Miss You’ hints at Feeder’s previous scratchy punk-pop brilliance, it’s one of only a few moments of light relief in an album full of humourless attempts at mature radio ballads.
Silent Cry’s 45 minutes are an overlong and tiring listen. At 13 tracks, it’s like having to explain the same thing over and over to a stupid co-worker. And as the sort of intellectual giant who reads Plato-quoting record reviews in their spare time, surely you don’t need music that reminds you of that feeling?
7 Comments | Album reviews, Music | Permalink
Posted by Jonathan Deamer
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