Stereophonics
Just Enough Education To Perform

THE REVIEW

Female choirs for about a minute, then a nice drum roll by the good Stuart Cable, heavy distortions, and Kelly Jones begins to delight us with his nice and raspy voice...

This is how the third studio album by the Welsh band Stereophonics begins, attempting to replicate the success of "Performance and Cocktails", succeeding partially. The opening track described above, "Vegas Two Times", is one of the worthy successors of the previous two albums, with a good mix of acidic and compelling rock'n'roll. As the album progresses, you encounter a semi-acoustic and relaxing record, composed of ballads with light touches of drums and solos ("Step on my old size nines", "Lying in the sun"), but in the long run it risks becoming a bit tiresome, proving to be slightly repetitive at times, yet still of good quality.

The best track is the seventh, "Watch them fly sunday", melancholic, with light distortions that slightly detach from the rest of the album. "Have a nice day" is very beautiful, ultra-famous, and overly commercial, also used for a TV commercial (for cookies, I think...). "Mr.Writer", the first single, is also very nice, calm in form but not in content, with a rather polemical text aimed at music critics and journalists, often accused of lying and exaggerating in their assessments. The album is not memorable (the "Phonics" have done better, much better!), easy to listen to, and will not go down in history, but at the moment it remains (chronologically) the last listenable and acceptable work of the Welsh band, considering the recent "flop" of "You gotta go there to come back".