The Storys - The Storys Album Review

The Storys
The Storys
Album Review

Do you find Will Young a bit too edgy? Keane a bit too extreme? Does hearing the opening bars to "Flowers In The Window" cause you to hyperventilate? Then buy this album, a record so bland it will inspire little more than a yawn. And possibly some flatulence.

From the opener "I Believe In Love" the LP wends its way through soft rock, to soft rock, and ends with an astonishing soft rock track, a nod to their mentor Elton John's most dull MOR tendencies. "I Believe In Love" is an interesting choice for an opener as it is by far the worst track on here.

Imagine Cliff Richard teaming up with Westlife to record a Christmas number one contender, with Hall & Oates as a backing band, and you're nearly there, but not quite. The full horror of the 80s style echoed handclaps and boy band crooning has to be heard to be believed.

The rest of "The Storys" is taken up by the kind of token ballads Robbie Williams has been filling his albums up with for the past ten years, none of them even touching "Angels", but you get the sense that they are really trying. Bless 'em. Sadly, after the so-bad-it's-funny opener, the other tracks blanche into one big over-polished mess. By about track nine, you'll think you've accidentally tuned into Heart FM.

And this is what leads us to the saddest part, The Storys will probably be huge. They fit so well on the supermarket shelf along with James Blunt, Katie Melua and their ilk, that you should expect to see this record being picked up by millions of mums during the big shop at Tesco.

With their big choruses that are ultimately insipid and soulless, The Storys are the British answer to Maroon 5, (particularly on the funk pastiche "You're Taking My Heart Away"), and their smug, sentimental musings will be coming to a town near you very soon. God help us all.

Ben Davis