A review?

I was sitting round the dinner table of a good friend the other night, and as always
the conversation got round to music, two aging men one balding the other bald what else is there to discuss certainly not recent women we’ve disappointed sexually, so I plugged my iphone(other mp3’s are available)into his cd player a trawled through the album list, past the E.L.O and M.I.A,both of which upset my wife no end. These days through headphones is the only way I get to listen to Mars Volta due to the famous in house prog embargo of 2007.Anyway I chose to give this an airing and straight away the muso bashing started. This record combined with large quantities of vino rouge nearly drove me and a very dear friend to blows, due to the large amount of obvious references this eponymous debut is cluttered with, im of the opinion that all music has to doff its cap to someone or something, he on the other hand has an in inherent problem with the plagiarist or what he sees to be plagiarism.
This is something will no doubt rumble on mostly because I continue to listen to new music and he continues to deny all existence of anything beyond 1979….meow
Anyway the review,
Lets get all the comparison and cliché stuff out of the way, yes Glasvegas is an awful name and yes they have a standy upy bird drummer like the velvets, and yes they do the odd girl group produced by My Bloody Valentine wotnot,and last of all they have a Scottish marychain bleakness…
All of this is true in the eyes of those that want to spend all there energy on trying to uncomplicated Glasvegas. All the actions of the paint by numbers reviewer.
But the facts are this is a 40minute goose bump fest, James Allen’s vocals combined with
the huge reverb, the thumping bass and drums rumbling under the chiming guitars,
a clean Marr-like sound that has a lovelorn romance to it, all of this produces a skin altering caucoughphany, and the only duff track is the Stabbed, a substandard poetry to classical music self indulgence moment, a classic debut fauxpas much like the Stone Roses Guernica,but it’s a mere 2 minutes long so its gone in a jiffy, the singles shine like petrol on tarmac, Geraldine starts with a crystalline guitar and opens widescreen into a windy alley way,with its lyrics about a social worker and the need, hope and desperation, it feels as if they could only be sung in Allen’s Glaswegian brogue, the soaring single segways into It’s my own cheating heart…..and swaying, ranting anthem. More icy chords and percussive tambourines are enveloped in massive scenery, drums pound and the bass continues to hold the widening aural canvas tight all the time the vision of a drizzly boom shot of the tenements flood your brain.
You get the picture it’s a one idea record, but that’s its great strength.Confidence and power in a sound that has proved so effective in the past, yes it’s not Genghis Tron or
Neo-mod break beat, but it does the job and does it well, Passionate, loud, ambitious and
not a mockney twang or stateside bastardization in sight. What happens next who knows
maybe a jazz concept triple album?

Daniel Vane