Nothing But Thieves - "Dead Club City" (2023)

Nothing But Thieves' last album, 2020's Moral Panic, has grown on me somewhat in the years since it's release. I think that I was in that pandemic malaise where the real world felt like a hazy memory and a record that was primarily focused on how shit the world is didn't really land for me at the time. However once reality set back in I found myself putting it on occasionally when I was in the mood for something nihilistic and aggressive. It's still a flawed record, the writing is fairly basic and on the nose and there are a few too many radio friendly ballads on it, but it had a bit more staying power than I gave it credit for at the time.

Dead Club City, however, has taken everything that didn't work with Moral Panic and doubled down on it, and stripped away all the things that worked about that album (and honestly the bands overall general appeal). The album is a very edgy, synth and electronic heavy concept album about the titular fictional city which is supposed to represent how the internet or social media (or something of that ilk) can consume you and take you out of reality - I think. I say 'I think' because if it wasn't for the obviousness of the album title and opening track Welcome To The DCC, I wouldn't have picked up on it being a narrative concept album, it's really vague and underdeveloped.

The opening track was the first teaser we got from the record and left me really apprehensive of where the band were going to go with the album, as it really didn't land for me. From the cheesy synth-funk base line, to the tacky modulated guitar solo and Connor Mason's vague sloganistic lyrics, it really reminds me of the 80's pastiche trite that Muse have been peddling for the past couple of years. It's just a very bland and tacky song. The following singles didn't inspire much more confidence in me to be honest. Overcome has grown on me a little since I first heard it, its perfectly serviceable but it's straight up the most formulaic and predictable new wave tune I've heard in a long time. Everything about it is something done a thousand times before: the driving drums and bassline, the broad lyrics about overcoming a mountainous challenge, the overdriven guitar solo. Keeping You Around is built around a bland and repetitive trap beat and the song barely has a melody. Connor drearily sings the hook and I can barely keep my eyes open throughout it.

Nestled in between Overcome and Keeping You Around is by far the best song on the record, Tomorrow Is Closed. The song is certainly the most complete and original on the album, being a bouncy and catchy break up tune. The track doesn't try anything gimmicky, focusing on the core song rather than any aesthetic or presentation. It's got Connor's best performance on the album, and the overall feel of it reminds me of an edgier more aggressive Keane song. I making a point of how this song gets the basics right because nearly everything following on the album doesn't. Pretty much every track is underwritten and repetitive, relying on a singular gimmick and crass overstuffed production (usually including some really trashy synth tones). I think it's important to note that the album is the first one the band have self-produced and I think it quite obviously shows.

City Haunts' gimmick is Connor singing the chorus in his highest possible register, and that combined with the returning tacky funk synth/guitar bass line makes the track feel like a bad Scissor Sisters' song rather than NBT. Do You Love Me Yet? has no idea what it is, having some of the worst lyrics of the whole album, so many unnecessary synths and effects, a random low-key kind of Beetles-y middle 8 that doesn't fit and fuzzed out guitar solo bolted on to the end of the track. Members Only continues on the trend of trying to make very raw and fuzzed out guitar work with the clean and plastic-y synths, as does the closer Pop The Balloon which is egregiously edgy and closes the album off with a really bad taste in the mouth.

Green Eyes :: Sienna is a more stripped back acoustic ballad 2/3 of the way in to the album and is actually an okay song. It's nothing special, but the fact that the band hasn't smothered it in tat makes it stand out above the rest, especially on the second half. Foreign Language and Talking To Myself follow it and frankly drag. They don't have the annoying gimmicks of some of the other songs, but they don't have much interesting going on, don't utilise any of the band's strengths and the production still isn't great.

When I first heard Dead Club City I really didn't like it as it basically fails at everything it attempts and does away with the band's strength and appeal. Despite the fuzzed out guitars and overall edginess, its barely a rock album really - most of these songs a quite toothless at their core. Yet they for the most part have no pop sensibility and are not catchy and rely on annoying gimmicks to grab your attention. Connor's amazing vocal ability is barely used, and the only time he really gets to show off is for the gimmick chorus in City Haunts. However, over the couple of listens since I've softened a little, as at least the band has earnestly attempted something different, even if it really hasn't worked. It's not cynical, it's not safe, it's just not very good.

Top Tracks: Tomorrow Is Closed

4/10

Billie Eilish - "Happier Than Ever" (2021)

Billie Eilish's debut record catapulted her into global stardom with its catchy and in your face singles which incorporated an ear grabbing ASMR style vocal approach and really unique and punchy electropop and trap production from her brother and producer Finneas. While I enjoyed these elements of that record, it felt pretty lightweight from a lyrical perspective and was trying way to hard to be edgy and dark without the substance to back it up. So I was hoping that as Billie grew as an artist she would produce something with more depth to it. 

Which is sort of what we've got with Happier Than Ever, but with couple of huge caveats which make the record feel like more of a step forward and then two steps back for Billie. Now 19 and dealing with the extreme pressures of growing up in a world where she's one of the biggest names in music, the record delves into this and how it has effected Billie and her relationships both personal and public. It's certainly more mature and sincere than the forced melodramatic teenage angst of the debut (Billie even sings "When I retell a story, I make everything sound worse" on the opening cut, Getting Older). However, to match this shift in tone, the immediate and attention demanding electropop production has been pared back; instead the much more subtle and minimal influences of soul and jazz-pop (and even a smattering of trip hop) take centre stage. I understand the intent in having more adult and 'tasteful' instrumentation to back up the more mature themes, however the instrumentals generally feel lacking across the board on this album. So many feel wafer thin with no real interesting texture or progression. Ideas that feel fairly fresh at the start of tracks feel run into the ground by their conclusion.

The same can be said of Billie's vocals, she forgoes a lot of the dynamic and staccato flows of the first record for a more traditional soul and vocal jazz approach. However she keeps the hushed, ASMR style elements; which results in plenty of places that would've benefited from a powerful vocals to increase the emotional intensity of these songs. The album is long, and Billie's current vocal aesthetic is really run into the ground by the end of it. The most frustrating thing about this is that Billie is clearly an incredibly talented singer and I really like her voice, but this whole ASMR thing has worn off for me and I wish she mixed it up a bit, because I know she's capable of it.

While most the tracks here range from inoffensively passable to fairly good, what really drags the album down is it's length and general bloat. At 16 tracks and 56 minutes, with most of the tracks being slow and and quiet ballads, it just drags. The stretch from Halley's Comet to Your Power in the second half really tests my patience with slow, sad balled after slow, sad balled. Furthermore the record feels very uncomfortable to listen to, but not in an intentional way. The messy and sprawling nature of it makes it feel unfocused, like Billie is just throwing her heart on the table and baring it all to us in that very teenage way. And while emotional breakdown records like this can work (and some have become all time classics), Happier Than Ever lacks the draw in terms of songwriting and production and just ends up feeling too long, too dour and uncomfortable.

Not that there aren't highlights. The opening track Getting Older is perhaps Billie's best written song to date, being this cute piano balled about looking back on your past self and looking forward to your future. Therefore I Am is the only track with the sense of fun and snark that made some of the singles from the debut so popular, and is catchy as hell. The title track starts as the same accoustic ballad as many of the songs on the record, but half way through switches up into a massive, completely blown out stadium pop rock song that compared to the rest of the album actually feels like it has some cathartic release to it. The singles my future and Lost Cause have also grown on me, being more of slow burns than the immediate singles from the debut record.

Happier Than Ever is such a frustrating record, as it addressed my main problem with the debut, but takes so many steps backwards in other areas that it doesn't feel like an improvement. I'm still hopeful that Billie will grow into the artist she has so much promise to be, but Happier Than Ever isn't that record unfortunately.

Top Tracks: Getting Older, Therefore I Am, Happier Than Ever

4/10

Catfish and the Bottlemen - "The Balance" (2019)

This record came out 2 months ago now and I keep putting off talking about it because it is simply so bland and predictable. As with so many bands over the past 15 years, Catfish put out an incredibly exciting and enjoyable debut in 2014's The Balcony, and then followed it up with a mostly mediocre The Ride in 2016, an album that had some stellar singles but most of the deep cuts sounded like bland Oasis demos which never left the studio for a reason. While there was always hope that the band could turn it around for their third release, I wasn't surprised it turned out like it did.

And there was hope for a while, the first two singles (also the first two tracks on the record) were legitimately enjoyable indie pop rock tunes. While nothing revolutionary, Longshot aims for an anthemic feel-good vibe and actually gets there, and also ditches the oasis cover band style of the last album. Fluctuate is easily the best the record has to offer, retaining much of the energy and angst that made the first album work so well. The way the guitar and bass play off each other during the verses is some legitimately creative songwriting. But then we get to third track and single, 2all. This is when I knew how this album was going to turn out. The instrumentation is bland and uninspired, and the lyrical content is just complete anthemic nothingness. Another (admittedly petty) gripe I have with this track is that title. It seems as if the band are more committed to their aesthetic of single word titles than actually making one that doesn't look incredibly dumb on its own.

The whole album feels like this to be honest, engineered to maintain the bands aesthetic and appeal to the fans. The same cover art style, the same "The ..." title, the same one word song titles, the same awkward cut-off at the end of the last song just because it happened by accident when they recorded Tyrants for the first album. It's even more awkward here than on The Ride, because the last song, Overlap, doesn't even sound like a big finale song. It just sounds like every over song on the album, just with the end missing...

All the songs follow the same structure, opening with the first verse at a certain tempo, with a big buildup into the chorus which is either faster or slower than the verse. Then repeat for the second verse and chorus, and then finally jump into a guitar solo or a bridge and then the big anthemic final chorus. The lyrical topics are also generally the same throughout the album (as they were the last time), generic relationship struggles that are just detailed enough to remain relatable, but not intense or introspective enough to feel like there's really any stakes.

I know I've really grilled this album, but it is well performed and well made, and does an energy to it that you can bop your head to in the backround. Individual guitar lines and some of Van McCann's vocals do grab me, but they're put into songs that overall sound all the same as each other, and all the same as what the band has done before. If you're a fan of what the band has done before and is not looking for any changes, then you'll probably really enjoy this record. However, for me, I would just rather listen to their first record, or something from the myriad of bands that have sounded like this over the past 15 years.

Top Tracks: Longshot, Fluctuate

4/10

Circa Waves - "What's It Like Over There?" (2019)

Circa Waves' 2017 sophomore album, Different Creatures, was a great development from their debut. It added darker and heavier elements to their youthful indie rock sound, creating a more sonically diverse album that still retained its blistering energy. So when frontman Keiran Shudall started talking about how the next album would be even more visceral and cinematic, I was exited. Unfortunately, it's not very cinematic, just underwritten, overproduced and sonically all over the place.

The album is short, 30 minutes long, with only 10 tracks. One of which, the title track, is only a intro track to the album. This track is literally the sound of some gulls and a van door closing, which I find frankly bizarre as it doesn't feel like it connects to the actual first track at all. So there's actually 9 proper tracks, in a 30 minute timespan which cover completely different styles. There's no flow or running thread throughout the album, just a bunch of vastly disparate songs.

And the songs, they aren't great. The actual first track, Sorry I'm Yours, sets the album off on a bad foot with typical Imagine Dragons style overblown bass and percussion during the chorus. It is such a turn off for me. Then follows Times Wont Change Me, a stomping piano rock tune that does initially have some bite. That is until about 50 seconds in when Keiran has sung the line 'these times wont change me now' about 4 times already and you realise hes going to sing it about 400 more times before the song finishes. That's a big problem that runs through much of the album, most of the songs feel really underwritten. The verses don't seem to have much detail or depth, and the choruses are just the song titles repeated 4 times over. Me Myself And Hollywood has this problem as well. The track has these really chilled verses with this lackadaisical Arctic Monkeys Humbug style guitar. But the title is legitimately the title repeated 4 times. What does 'me myself and Hollywood' even mean? Be Somebody Good is perhaps strangest mess on the whole album. It opens with a really nice angst ridden opening verse that's set to programmed drums and it builds in intensity until the chorus hits, which consists of Keiran singing 'I wanna be somebody good' over and over against the returning overblown pop-rock drums and bass. There is a really nice sounding guitar solo at the end of the track, but it really comes out of nowhere and is over in 6 seconds, so feels really out of place. The Way We Say Goodbye and Motorcade are more consistent sounding songs, but are rather underwhelming attempts at their respective genres (the former being mid-2000s soft rock akin to Coldplay and Snow Patrol, and the latter being a more electronic rock leaning sound). The best the album has to offer is lead single Movies and the closer Saviour. Movies is a pretty standard Circa Waves song, with their trademark youthful energy. Savour is the bands attempt at blues rock and definitely feels like the loosest song on the album, and also seems the most poignant, with lyrics about class divisions.

It's strange after the political songwriting on Different Creatures that this album is so devoid of it. Apparently Keiran was fighting writers block when creating this album, and you can definitely tell with all the repeated phrases and the fact these songs don't really appear to be about much beyond their vague pontificating. The frustrating thing is that there is something I like about every song on this record; I like Keiran's performance of chorus on Sorry I'm Yours, I like the backing vocals and production on Passport, I like the general aesthetic of Me Myself and Hollywood. But they're all assembled into these hodgepodge, clunky songs. If they were struggling to write something meaningful, maybe the band should've taken a break for a bit instead of heading right into the studio.

Top Track: Movies, Saviour

4/10