Remember Menswear? The band that clung desperately to the coat-tails of Camden’s Britpop scene with their “Blur like us” comments rammed down our throats every five minutes. Well now we have this lot whose press blurb informs us that “[a]fter producing the likes of The Libertines and Razorlight, the East London music scene has now brought us…RED STAR LINE.”
This smacks of record companies sending out A&R men to every pub, garage and school hall in the area desperately trying to sign anything plugged in to an amp in the hope of feeding off the scraps of the latest media pop frenzy. ‘Centerville’ is like The Inspiral Carpets without the keyboards and is all about crap life in a small town. Not that they tell us which town they’re originally from, no doubt in fear they’ll get slapped next time they go home to get their washing done. Second track is called, god help us, ‘Hackney Riots’ and is full of hollow posturing, clichéd lyrics and a boring riff that goes on and on. I think they’re trying to come across as The Clash doing Rage Against The Machine on this one but it’s closer to Blue doing Handbags At Five Paces.
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The last track ‘The Wire’ is live and includes - Shock! Horror! – swearing: “Got a bad fucking headache…you’re a fucking disgrace” etc. The Stone Roses are cited as another influence and I’m with them on this one as like Ian Brown the lead singer of RED STAR LINE stays resolutely flat in his live vocals.
The album comes out in April but until then why not visit their website to receive karmic wisdom from such revelatory insights as ‘lyrics are simply words put to music’. Cosmic.
www.redstarline.co.uk
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