Album Review: Scarlet Rebels - "See Through Blue"

 

Any band that touts itself as the sound of the (ugh) New Wave of Classic Rock getting political is at least an intriguing prospect on the surface and so I approached this second album from Llanelli rockers Scarlet Rebels with a bit of interest. I mean, it can't be any worse than some of the stinkers that this genre's thrown up in the last few years, surely?

The opening track here I'm Alive reminds me a bit of a three way collision between the Struts, the Black Crowes and Reef with its twisting Skynyrd style riff. It's alright but it doesn't really stand out from the crowd. And unfortunately it's kind of symptomatic of the rest of this album - there's plenty of good musicianship and hard graft in there but the tunes here just don't have the hooks to really pull you in. Not to mention that tracks like the ballad-by-numbers Leave The Light On (which sounds like a second division Quireboys more than anything) really do lay on the clichés like nobody's business. See Through Blue is an album that you'll happily listen to once but I very much doubt you'll cue it up for repeated listening.

Ah but what about that much-trumpeted political invective? Well, These Days (which sounds more like the Stereophonics than anything) has the lyrics "These days I'm neither left nor right" and I Can't Say's chorus offers up the, um, insight of "I can't tell whether you are right or wrong" - so pretty much the politics of indecision then…sigh, talk about a cop-out. It all kind of makes the posturing here sound less than convincing - it's a bit difficult to take a band claiming "We're the rebels on the way!" on a song with big over-polished production like Take You Home particularly seriously to be honest. We're Going Nowhere and the Billy Bragg-esque title track at least seem to have some genuine anger behind them and probably point the way forward for this band.

Credit to Scarlet Rebels for at least attempting to put a different spin on the incredibly hackneyed NWOCR genre but compared to some of the genuinely dangerous political firebrands like Bob Vylan or the Muslims who've broken through in recent years or the sheer anguished fury of Dead Sheeran or Rum Lad, See Through Blue just sounds massively watered down for the most part. It's less the angry dissident screaming injustice from the barricades and more a middle class Guardian reader tutting over his cornflakes while watching the headlines on BBC Breakfast News. Full marks for good intentions lads but this falls a fair way short I’m afraid.

Bandcamp Link

NITE SONGS RATING: 🌓🌓🌓🌓🌓🌑🌑🌑🌑🌑 (5/10)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Garbage Days Revisited #90: Soho Roses - "The Third And Final Insult" (1989)

Image
  "If you won't love me then I'll find someone who will!"  - Soho Roses  - So Alone The Soho Roses were a classic case of right band, wrong time. If they'd broken on to the scene in the last few years then they'd have had a ready made audience on the 21st century power pop scene and probably be regulars at Some Weird Sin and similar club nights in the Smoke. The reality? They broke through towards the tail end of the '80s and got lumped in with the dying embers of the Soho glam scene, leaving behind one sadly underappreciated album and a few EP's before self-combusting. In a way, I sort of see the Roses as a British version of Enuff Z'Nuff. Not so much in terms of their sound but more of the fact that they were a group crowbarred in with glam who weren't really a natural fit there and kind of paid the price for it - I've always thought Enuff Z'Nuff sounded more like a Britpop band with flashbomb guitars than a hair metal band. Oh sure, ...
Read more

Garbage Days Revisited #19 - The Dictators - "Go Girl Crazy!" (1975)

Image
  "Set me free, I might know better when I'm older but till then..."  - The Dictators  - Weekend By some distance the oldest album we've featured in this column so far, I very nearly went for the Dictators' 2001 comeback album DFFD  for this feature similar to what I did with the New York Dolls GDR article a couple of weeks back but after a bit of umming and ahhing, I decided it really had to be the group's 1975 debut Go Girl Crazy!  just because it's arguably the great trailblazing US punk album that everyone's forgotten about. I guess that you could almost say that if the Ramones were the Sex Pistols of US punk then the Dictators were kind of like the Eddie & The Hot Rods in that they crashlanded just that one year too early to really reap the punk whirlwind when it took off in 1976-77 but if you listen to Go Girl Crazy! , it's got the fingerprints of a lot of bands who'd come along soon afterwards on it, especially da Bruddas. The big ...
Read more

Album Review: The Fades - "Night Terrors"

Image
  Hailing from South London, the Fades are gaining a reputation of one of the premier garage rock bands in the capital these days and, as with a few albums we've reviewed in these webpages of late, Night Terrors  was written during the lockdown as it was a recurring feature of life for the band's frontman Dave during the lockdown. As befits its title and subject matter, Night Terrors  is an off-kilter effort which might take a few listens to get into but rewards those who persevere with it. Certainly, the discordant vocals and guitars often give the impression of the whole operation being on the verge of collapse on the likes of The Pessimist  and Known It All Along  while Lost My Job  goes into XTC/Nightingales style post-punk territory. However, the likes of People In General  show that they can rein the weirdness in and build up an intriguing multi-part epic which starts off as tuneful new wave before drifting into a nightmarish state-of-the-nation ...
Read more