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Rating: Rummaging through the scattered records in my room, I found incredible things. A ticket to a Liars concert, the first disowned album by Ocean Colour Scene (on the Fontana label), an original tape of Starsailor, and the second (and last) CD of Hurricane #1. Andy Bell, after the beautiful Ride and before the decadent Oasis, imitated his future Mancunian leader, crafting a few cute songs, aided by the glue-and-sand voice of Alex Lowe, yet another talented epigone of an already geriatric Rod Stewart, while the rest of the band is more than negligible. Now, if you write a song like Step Into My World, worthy of standing there, next to delightful brit pop gems, no one holds a gun to your head to write an album where you ramble on with nonsensical ideas. You are not Noel Gallagher, even if Creation trusts you, even if you put all the ideas you have in your head, even if you go out drinking with Alan McGee: you are not Noel Gallagher.
Because producing an album like Only The Strongest Will Survive is more than a joke (and I even bought it!), it's the crude symbol of a britpop mannerism that has no reason to exist other than to make you laughably self-referential to the point of self-pity. The strings in the title track don't make you grandiose; you are not Richard Ashcroft, you are not the Verve. And Alex Lowe is not Kelly Jones, he is no one, a cover singer, for weddings, for television. The Price That We Pay is anesthetic, The Greatest High is delightful to listen to during an aperitif, Rising Sign is ideal for a soundtrack of a B-movie that no one watches. And then what? Absolute nothingness. I am amazed that someone (me!) even bought the fruit of such depraved intellectual rape.
And I am amazed at Creation or whoever it was who, just a few years ago, even spent money and time to release a double Greatest Hits of a band with two albums and a bunch of beastly remixes.
Andy Bell, you deserve to be where you are: with the “Bidi Ai”.
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