Rooney
Calling The World

THE REVIEW

I'm sorry, but there's a need to be ruthless. The Rooneys must be torn down with a certain vehemence. I feel it falls to me to do it because they are the ones I like the most. In fact, the songs on "Calling The World" are all cute, beautiful, and very beautiful, but they're not Rooney's: they belong to genres that have been my favorites for years, and they are by artists I've even reviewed and praised.

We could start by playing together to identify the sixteen thousand other songs they draw from for the big single "When Did Your Heart Go Missing", starting with the initial guitar riff, or trying to guess who owns the keyboard riff of the simple and highly successful "Believe": in the end, if the album were all like this, with criticism for criticism's sake, it would be fun to listen to.

Instead, the remaining "recalls" (euphemism) to past artists (even recent ones) are much more elemental and easy to discover. The Rooneys don't realize they are a blasphemy in Californian slang, and they confidently forge ahead along their improvised path; and so, one finds oneself in a continuous descent into the inferno of world music... In the title track, they remain a little more faithful to the cover and dabble in Brit-pop where even the singer's voice is similar (not the accent, a true Californian) to Robbie Williams. In "Tell Me Soon" they marry the pompousness of E.L.O. with Queen's "Let Me Live"; adapting surf rock to new sounds in "Don't Come Around Again" and beach soft rock in "What For". "Paralized" is minimal punk rock, in Ric Ocasek's "Troublizing" style: it is a track, structurally, similar to the 'famous' "Celebrity Skin" by Hole (that album was produced by Ocasek).

But all this is just the beginning. In a couple of tracks, we helplessly witness two satanic and unnatural pairings between incompatible sounds and styles. "Love Me Or Leave Me" is an ABBA-punk, and it makes me think of a Swedish supermodel choosing a large black mangy stray dog as her concubine... In "All In Your Head" it is impossible not to notice the incestuous emo-sexual relationship between Billy Idol's 80s pop granddad verses and the Californian emo-core grandson in the choruses.

But the most unspeakable thing, and therefore the one that must be reported with courage, is the recklessness (and skill!) with which the Rooneys tackle rock opera. It's worth being detailed and "scientific" in examining such tracks: in "I Should Have Been After You" it begins with Brian May's guitar from the intro of "Queen II". When the keyboard-organ rises, I recognize it as the "my" Utopia songsters, but the better ones, those from "Swing To The Right". In "Are You Afraid?" it starts with a piano and a tired voice, rising with a keyboard that nobody has played like this since 1983, on which violent guitars are hurled: it sounds like the pomp rock and post-prog of those we know well. When the singing begins, early U2's epic dominates. It returns to Utopian pop song structures in the chorus, and the earlier keyboards start again...

A group without any precise style, capable of copying or worse, mixing everything to their liking; a band that, however, has listened to quite a lot of music, or at least a lot compared to other clone-bands. But it's not worth harboring any sympathies for a group just because it revives, amid the confusion, a couple of styles that, although this is a decade of revivals and imitations, remained absent. Instead, one inevitably must emphasize the fact that in a total of twelve tracks, Rooney presented at least ten different pop-rock music styles; adding posh poses and Maroon 5 style polished video clips, and an album cover reminiscent of 1960s English mods, you get a total of at least twelve different identities, and it doesn't matter how many of the songs you-I like.

If you are twenty years old or younger, ignore, don't respond to Rooney's call. And have a nice compilation made by the oldest friend you have or your older sister's boyfriend-for-the-moment: there you will find the originals of which Rooney is a copy. Or worse, a collage.