Caw-Caw Music

General Fiasco fall into a category of rock bands that’s grown broader and deeper ever since the likes of Snow Patrol and Coldplay nailed their formulas and became radio mainstays: the bit-part players in the grander commercial indie picture. Theirs is a sound that’s immediately comparable to dozens – sorry, hundreds – of similar outfits, tidy choruses bookended by perfunctory verses and lyrics that paint a scene of contemporary living that’s recognisable by the masses. It’s easy, effortless fare, as digestible as a sensibly balanced meal and just as forgettable. It’s on the radio for three minutes, you like it, but never seek out further information. Because… Sorry, what were we discussing?

Hailing from Northern Ireland, the trio have been on introducing radars for some time – on this evidence, though, it’s hard to determine exactly why given the abject absence of originality. Buildings features three of four singles to date, and in perfect first-record fashion serves as a ‘til-this-point summary of its makers’ achievements. Of these songs already released as standalone entities, We Are the Foolish is the most immediately grabbing – appropriately, it opens proceedings here. There’s an air of The Enemy in anthem mode about it, but also backing yelps reminiscent of rather more critically approved acts such as The Kissaway Trail and Mew.

Much of Buildings does follow a straighter line well trodden, though, and its meat-and-potatoes make-up, while accomplished enough, simply doesn’t showcase a band deserving of highlighting above so many other domestic acts scrambling for audiences at the same level. Echoes of The View bounce around numbers like Ever So Shy and I’m Not Made of Eyes – perhaps it’s something to do with vocalist Owen Strathern’s pitch, but despite obvious accent differences there’s definitely a little Kyle Falconer about him. The thick strings of Sinking Ships contrast awkwardly with the man’s words – it’s a recipe that’d suit a softer-voiced lead singer, but General Fiasco are clearly more comfortable with comparatively raucous compositions.

Which, relatively speaking, aren’t actually that raucous at all. A collection of mostly mid-paced songs that leave no impression whatsoever, Buildings is the very epitome of a term coined some time ago, but far from being revealed as redundant: landfill indie. And at the rate these acts continue to emerge, deliver only mediocrity and subsequently slip from view, we’re going to have to think about exporting our rocking wastrels sooner than later.

Before hitting play on The Optimist, there’s a fear that it’s going to be a less timely rehearsal of New Young Pony Club’s 2007 debut. And while the fever of that LP came from its direct rip of the early 80s, its aloof riot-starting propensities and conscious eclecticism became listless by the third playback.

Thankfully, the band have returned with a triumphant LP which ceremoniously leaves the posturing behind, delivering a freer sound built on an exciting mix of crescendo, space and charm rather than quips clothed in layers of smut. Frontwoman Tahita Bulmer’s vocals envelope the sound unafraid, cut loose from their quasi-spoken cage of pretence.

It’s astonishing to hear the difference between the NYPC of new and old, yet so apparent even from The Optimist’s first track, Lost a Girl. It’s a glistening pop song full of stops, starts, lurching hooks and slightly dissonant vocals that defiantly possess anything but the faux-nonchalance of the debut. “I’m making you smile, why am I doing that?” she sings, brutally picking apart a relationship dead in the water, with more openness in the one line than at any time in Fantastic Playroom.

The range on this album is colossal, even though its influences are still more or less paraded; take the title-track’s whirling, steam-engine keyboard parts, transplanted straight from The Horrors’ reinvention of My Bloody Valentine, and the PJ Harvey-recalling sadness on the album’s ballad, Stone. But there’s far more than mimicry on offer here; colossal key-changes and an audible sense of excitement become the album’s revelation.

The Optimist suffers from a slight top-loading, but the expertly self-produced twists and turns within its songs more than compensate. sure-hit-single We Want To’s exhilarating harmonies and so-far-away-from-artful chorus are expertly structured, polarising with the way Before the Light pitches a frustrated, drone-like lead vocal against the sugar of Sarah Jones and Lou Hayter’s backing.

The contrasts are ecstatic, setting in stone just how remarkable a comeback New Young Pony Club have pulled off. The Optimist is a super-smart pop album at the top of its game.

BBC chart blog critic Fraser McAlpine summarised baby-faced American-Haitian RnB superstar Jason Derülo thusly, in a review of his single In My Head: “(he) is basically a one-man Lynx advert, where the version of reality he would most like to see happen is straight out of a 14-year-old boy’s ideal of what girls are really like.”

If it wasn’t for the desire to get at least somewhere close to a rough-guide word count, we could just leave things there. This is music that rings shrilly with a deafening hollowness, an unashamed fakery akin to a dream-state where fantasy and reality have become mixed and hopelessly muddied. In Derülo’s world, the everyday is always a neat place to be, with saucy encounters only a shopping trip away and where every conversation is characterised by completely ridiculous Auto-Tune’d vocoder vocals.

Honestly, was nobody paying attention when Jay-Z released Death of Auto-Tune? That’s Jay-Z… y’know, the massively successful hip hop star who artists like Derülo should look up to as an example of an outsider overcoming the majority on largely his own terms. When Jay-Z releases an album, critics care; when he releases a single, the download-guzzling public go crazy for it. He’s harnessed a difficult dichotomy – mainstream acceptance and the respect of music writers who used to determine what was hot, and what was absolutely not.

Assessed on such old-school terms, this self-titled album is as hot as the frozen chicken fillets that’ve been sitting in the bottom of your freezer since you cancelled that barbecue at the last minute in the summer of 2006. You should chuck them out, really, but they’re lodged in there whether you like it or not. Again, a parallel presents itself: as undeniably terrible as these songs are, a select few do bore in deeply, albeit against one’s wishes.

Which, to an extent, is the sign of a fine pop song. On the other hand, the Crazy Frog did okay for himself (himself, right? He had a ding-a-ling, didn’t he?), and that song ranks among the ‘Greatest’ Pop Abominations Ever. So, yes, Whatcha Say – which rips both Imogen Heap and a not-particularly-funny Saturday Night Live sketch – and In My Head have a certain catchiness to them, and What If and Blind raise unintentional smiles. But all sorts of diseases are catchy, too, and just like Derülo’s debut album, you want rid of them as soon as possible.

The comeback trail for Boyzone was a bumpy one long before the death of Stephen Gately in October 2009, an event that delayed completion of this fourth studio album.

Back Again… No Matter What, released in 2008 to coincide with reunion activity – the group had been effectively disbanded since 2000 – was a poorly received rehashing of 1999’s best-of set, By Request; its three new songs offered little beyond the established, ballad-heavy formula. Tour tickets sold well, but unlike 1990s rivals-cum-peers Take That, Boyzone didn’t noticeably embrace a fresh audience upon their return.

While Take That have now courted the affections of three generations, the stolid, workmanlike approach to arrangement on Boyzone albums has always been too clinical to enjoy comparable appeal. And it was only after Take That’s split in 1996 that Boyzone hit their creative stride, with third album Where We Belong (1998) featuring a number of tracks written by the singers themselves.

Sadly, in the same year they took Westlife on tour with them, leading to a period of pop dominance that most will want to forget. Seven numbers ones in a row: who’d admit to buying them now? Anyway, pardon the digression: back to Brother matters, and album four from Boyzone plays out largely to expectations. It’s soft about its edges, its lyrical content exclusively syrupy – but that’s fine, as at this stage in their career, pronounced progression was never a likely option. The four play to recognised strengths, and their writing/producing team – with credits like Leona Lewis, Celine Dion and Delta Goodrem – is an accomplished, if not particularly showy one.

It’s sad, though, that Gately eulogy-of-sorts Gave It All Away – written by Mika, and featuring the late singer’s easily identifiable vocals – is so very poor. Beginning with backwards strings, the song shuffles to an awkward, cod-reggae beat – imagine Ali Campbell on auto pilot, writing for the money. Such is the opener’s weakness that Love Is a Hurricane can’t fail to impress. Invigoratingly breezy, and featuring a strong Ronan Keating lead vocal, it’s evidence that Boyzone can raise the pace when it suits them, rare though such instances are. Let Your Wall Fall Down is another welcome diversion into such territories.

But with ballads dominating, Brother is a Boyzone album for Boyzone fans – younger ears accustomed to the faster RnB tempos of contemporary boybands like JLS may wonder what the fuss was ever about.