The Last Goodnight
Poison Kiss

Every now and then, mainly out of desperation, I find myself tuning into MTV. Dead times, which I certainly don't try to fill with good music... I mostly settle for watching some pretty girl, that curvaceous Rihanna, or that gorgeous girl all covered in piercings and tattoos who looks at you like a bunny in the loop of Lenny Kravitz... But this time, never mind the pretty girls! There's this stuff, this lousy singer with his uninspired band, there's this loser with a punk mohawk... Not one who shaves his head and doesn't even do the mohawk on a normal hairstyle like it's done today. He leaves the hair a few millimeters long and leaves a big, huge crest on his head, not even a fighting cock from Bangkok. If he thought he'd look cooler, well, I think he should fire his image consultant. No, wait a minute... I can definitely do better than this! Let's see... Ah, here we go! The guy is an honest and perhaps bespectacled singer-songwriter without any peculiar features, whose record company has imposed to take on a rebellious look and attitude, all to sell a mediocre album to the kids.

"Your music is too normal to make an impact..." declares the top manager sprawling casually on his session man's leather chair. "But I'm a normal person..." "That's why we need to work on the character." "W...w...what?" "W...w...who? Me?" "Why don't you adopt a nice emo-core dark look, like Joel Madden, like Jared Leto? Nooo, you aren't cute like them, as a matter of fact, only your mother could call you attractive, certainly not a teenager..." "W...what does m...my m...mother have to do with the s...songs?" "I've got it! A simple, enormous, punk mohawk. Let yourself be seen, turn sideways..." "S...sideways?" "Yes, go ahead... Like that. Good. Now do cock-a-doodle-doo (coccoduludù in America)." "W...what?" Go on, don't be shy. Do you want to make records or not?" "Cock-a-doodle-doo (coccoduludù in America)!" Perfect! Perfect! See you in six months, when your hair grows out! And make sure, don't dare cut them even a little. Our hairdressers will take care of it. You'll see: I'll make you a star!" "A s-s-s-star?"

Ah ah ah, poor thing. Even though he tries to look comfortable with the Halley's comet on his head, it's obvious that it's not for him at all, you can clearly see that it's only done to get his songs approved, to make them enter the teenage world's imagination, the MTV world! And yet I want to laugh it off to the end, not only at the sight but also at hearing this failure and his band. What's their name? The Last Goodnight? Can you imagine a little princess receiving a goodnight kiss from this scarecrow? Aah ahah.

But what is "Poison Kiss,” debut album? The title track/opener seems to come out of Maroon 5, but the arrangements and sounds are decidedly less stylish, more gaudy, and pop of nowadays: tacky keyboards, no little guitar keeping time swaying, but a big one roaring in the choruses, drums that have nothing funky, dry, and cool but which are instead rock. Who do they think they are, these guys? But weren't they a pop-indie.emo band with no claims? And the following "Where We Belong" is even more emblematic: just listen to it to understand that if they want to make funky pop for single charts they won't get anywhere, and certainly won't end up selling as many copies as the Maroon, nor end up in bed with Russian tennis players in the top twenty positions of the WTA ranking. And all this is not only because of that horrible black crest, but certainly, just looking at them in the face, in their video, to understand it. The fact is that the music in these tracks is so far removed from that "Pictures Of You", from that standard pop-rock ballad, from the chorus so banal that not even the emo core, not even the Feeder...

And yet... And yet the voice of this not very powerful and not very pretentious rooster manages to convey, to evoke, to be liked, to come out quite theatrical, even in the almost spoken verses of their first single, it must be said. "Pictures Of You" then has beautiful autumnal passages, especially the keyboards, beautiful "nostalgic halts," now that I listen to it again. And the funky tracks, although arranged like that, are well played and are lively, pleasant, danceable...

When "Stay Beautiful" comes along, you've already definitely reassessed them. Indeed, you already like them, and this track is so successful and well thought out that Maroon 5 should run their hands through hair full of creams, lotions, and conditioners for the light reflections. And then again, what else happens? They abandon, soft Sunday awakening of "Good Love" aside, the funky and return to the paths of the rest of the Anglo-Saxon radio pop rock landscape. They don't stand out, they don't leap out of the cauldron into which they've deliberately decided to re-immerse, with "One Trust", but it's undeniable that they have their own distinctiveness. When I already think they should have insisted on the fast, on the danceable, and made a truly new album in the current bleak radio-friendly landscape, they surprise me again, in the exaggerated ballad "Return To Me", where the rooster, named Kurtis John, is at his peak. Only stars should be authorized by their respective labels to dare such interpretations: here the unfortunate "with the mohawk despite himself" is a hybrid (and a successful one) between Steven Tyler and Céline Dion, and other than awkward! Here our guy is quite confident of what he does!

And indeed they trust themselves, and perhaps if they didn't trust, they wouldn't have decided to dedicate themselves so much to the "standard" melody, opting for something catchier. The evidence also comes in "If I Talk To God", where John is a cross between the expressive power of a Tyler who doesn't know what hard rock is and the sentimental and stylish vocality of Phil Collins. The band seems capable of anything, they are a "ask and you shall receive" band, as demonstrated in "Push Me Away", wave-windy rock all arpeggios that, had it been with a million tons more keyboards, would have been a perfect fit inside the first Killers album, or even in "In Your Arms", weddings all done at home Feeder between "Comfort In Sound" and "Just The Way I'm Feeling". Usual chorus, with excellent atmospheres, and good speed for the concluding "Incomplete".

Usual choruses, usual sounds, usual band for MTV, usual ballads, usual cheerful songs to make up the soundtrack for Breil adverts, usual life as always, usual Music TeleVision: The Last Goodnight won't change the world of music. But they are good, clever, honest with themselves, and therefore they respect their desire for charting. Yet they are effective, they know how to entertain, they marry influences among themselves which at the first album are a little too pronounced but which will be refined over time; they know how to change register, they are not afraid of being romantic or simple or subtly sad, despite the audience they target. And despite the audience they target, they are almost autumn-like; they don't pretend to make you fall in love at the first listen or the first album, but they are aware of their abilities and possibilities in the near-immediate future. And they don't feel inferior to anyone. And maybe Kurtis isn't even that much of a loser.

And maybe one day he too will go to bed with Russian tennis players. And maybe one day he'll get rid of that horrid black mohawk... And it will turn out that, with a normal hairstyle, he'll be much cooler than the singer from Maroon 5, or Jared Leto.

Good job. I swear I won't make fun of you anymore if I see you around MTV. Oh, by the way: what's your next video?