BUZZCOCKS: MODERN (1999)
1) Soul On A Rock; 2)
Rendezvous; 3) Speed Of Life; 4) Thunder Of Hearts; 5) Why Compromise; 6) Don't
Let The Car Crash; 7) Runaround; 8) Doesn't Mean Anything; 9) Phone; 10) Under
The Sun; 11) Turn Of The Screw; 12) Sneaky; 13) Stranger In Your Town; 14)
Choices.
No, it isn't very modern, to tell the truth.
Yes, it begins with an electronic loop, which makes it, I guess, about as
modern as 1978 or 1979, when those things came into popular prominence — so now
what, the Buzzcocks are trying to catch up with twenty-year old New Wave
fashions? Is this irony or stupidity, or one trying to masquerade as the other?
I am not saying that the addition of synthesizers specifically makes this music
worse than it would be otherwise; actually, it just... makes no difference
whatsoever.
Third time in a row, the new-look Buzzcocks
come out with a perfectly listenable, reasonable record that is thoroughly and
utterly lacking in excitement — even if they seem to be doing everything in
their power to rectify the situation. The songs get more diverse, the melodies
are being carefully and meticulously designed with attention to hooks, the
choruses are supposed to be catchy, but the album as a whole is a yawnfest. I
wish I could single out even one song and surround it with a paragraph of
humble praise, but this stuff is so slick, every single tune just slides out of
my graps like a piece of wet soap.
I'll take a negative example instead: ʽWhy
Compromise?ʼ, a song that is supposed to pack some anger and frustration, but
its stiff production — the mechanic, compressed guitar sound, the stupid
electronic percussion, the nasty robotic vocals — deprives it of any signs of
life, leaving a worthless corpse of a song. With the happy tunes here, the situation is not much different either: they
all sound dead on arrival. As if this weren't a true Buzzcocks album, but
rather an album programmed by automatons who have been machine-taught to
formally imitate the Buzzcocks. Even the fast tempos no longer help. Nothing
helps. Nothing!
Okay, so maybe the actual problem is with the
vocal hooks. They just do not have the appeal of old. When Shelley howls
"My soul on a rock, I know what I feel, my soul on a rock, it hurts cause
it's real", he is simply being inadequate — there is no actual hurt felt in that chorus, and I am
totally not sure that he really knows what he feels. At least, he has no way of
letting me know what he feels. Just
remember something like "what do I get? oh-whoah, what do I get?",
now that was a chorus that had real
emotion, and you could feel a jolt of hurt and disappointment from that simple,
well-executed line. These lines have
no emotional content; nor do the riffs. It's amazing, really, how fleeting this
old thing called «inspiration» can be.
Afraid am I that, where its two predecessors at
least had a few hints at former greatness, Modern
is the firzt Buzzcocks album that simply deserves a plain old thumbs down.
They tried throwing in additional sonic textures, some genre diversity, and
they just ended up with no memorable or meaningful songs whatsoever.
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