Losers - Beautiful Losers Album Review

Whistle posse make some noise.......

As Ms Chrissie Hynde so eloquently put it many years ago..'It's a thin line between love and hate' and whilst hate may be an all too extreme emotion to be harbouring in such a context it does not negate the fact that art forms do tread a precarious path. When does a joke stop being funny and start being offensive, when does art stop being creative and instead becomes crass? How wide is the gap between FatBoy Slim and Jive Bunny?

XFM's Eddy Temple Morris and The Cooper Temple Clause's Tom Bellamy may be someone's idea of a dream ticket on paper, on CD however they are somewhat less than the sum of their respective parts. The unashamedly 90's references to dance demigods The Prodigy and Faithless abound on the Losers album but the results are closer to parody rather than perfection. In trying to take a 2010 twist on a time not long enough forgotten to be able to remember how good the originals were The Losers have only highlighted their own lack of creativity and imagination.

Beautiful Losers opening 97 seconds, of Three Colours, start promisingly, with an anticipatory heavy build up akin to a Prog-Rock epic the likes of Rick Wakeman or Jon Lord would be proud of. Then the vocals kick in and everything is well and truly spoiled. For 'This is my Church, this is where I heal my hurts'....substitute 'This is my land, this is where I breathe, this is my home, this is where I break, these are my friends, they are who I love, this is my dance floor, this is where I dance...dance....dance..' let me see those Glo Sticks...! The remainder of album fails on similar grounds, the music is passable, enjoyable even in a nostalgic way, but the vocal treatments and lyrics are generally awful.

No Man Is An Island, the Losers Theme, contains some truly unique rhyming couplets. Never in his, or his children's, children's, children's lifetimes would I have bet that Trent Reznor would have had his bands name used like this...'Janes Addiction, Nine Inch Nails, Football, England, Rugby, Wales.' Oh dear. It may have been recorded at Bleak House but I suspect that Mr Dickens would be spinning in his grave had he foreseen the use of the English language he so adored turn out quite like this. 'Nothing Will Die' sees John Merrick raise up and declare 'I am not an animal' before being told that people are frightened of what they don't understand, uhmm.

The first single taken from the album, 'Flush', throws up (sorry) yet more ...............individual use of poetic language. The wannabe Dan Le Sac vs Scroobious Pip effort sees Riz Mc spitting to the techno beats. You may miss the words in the dance tent, or in your Nova with the bass bins shaking but they are difficult to ignore in the confines of ones own headphones..............'You're like a s**t that won't sink, you left skid marks but the scars don't last...................you been smokin' way too much bush', exactly. Sirenna, the recently released 2nd single takes an altogether different route to the dancefloor. Here we have a slightly more subtle approach that pushes the reach of The Losers influence still further back. The 80's are all over Sirenna with a Simple Minds anthemic electro feel gaily tripping along.

Clearly not in a lucid state of mind, or with a gun to his head, Brian Molko, he of Placebo, finishes off Beautiful Losers with a degree of style. 'If you let anyone else sing on this track I'll have them killed' he is reported to have pleaded. The Losers cover of Jane's Addiction's 'Summertime Rolls' is all fuzzy fed back guitars and Brian's fabulously affected voice, a last minute life line that gives some credibility to a disappointing adventure for all protagonists concerned.

The Beautiful Losers by Losers if a tale of what could, or should, have been. Lyrically inept, musically dated and vocally woeful, except for the redeeming presence of Mr Molko. If you can afford a Nissan Qashui why would you buy a Kia Sportage? With music you have no such worries, a Faithless track costs as much as a Losers one. Spend wisely.

Andrew Lockwood.