Strict rhythms and limp wrists.
'Beautiful' is further art-school, middle class, pompguff. Verse lyrics of 'I've been staring a train window, listenin' to my cassette player / I'll meet you at Raynes Park station / But only if it's not rainin'' make the initial critical instincts real and 3-D, stating suburban areas and portraying the nonchalant youth that you'd readily slap in the face. Here he is, pushing himself through The Usual of life, oh so dippy and in need of a kick up the arse and a good telling off. Chorus hooks of 'It's all, it's all, it's all so beautiful' mirror the guitar on a slight harmony and do nothing to rouse. As the words slip around the promise of a note, it's all so quietly rebellious that its almost laughable.
Don't get the wrong impression and don't take the insinuations and run with them. The Maximo Park/Futureheads opener is almost as good as their stated shoes, but there are associations to this type of modern musical melodrama that are not, ahem, good. Even if these guys are nowhere near a fashion scene and have been shunted from any scene they've tried to enter, you can almost see the string of uni gigs and the pomposity oozing out of the speakers. There is an arrogance and snobbishness, or overly jumpy feel that puts you on the edge of your seat and you before you know it the deliberately stupid repetition has shacked up in your room and is drinking your beer and chatting up your partner of tales that aren't true and fashions that aren't deep. As the singer has nothing much to say and the guitar and bass flip and slip all over the shop and drums/rhythms of compositions have an epileptic fit, it's all very together, clever and whatever , but it's all, it's all, it's all, so fecking annoying!
The final hope, 'Deathfame', is a no-hoper that slinks on by in its moody, half-singing vocals that grate and grind against the psyche and is about as accessible and likeable as a congested Cilla Black headlining at a charity casino event and managing to spit black phlegm on your rented tuxedo, even though you in the fifth row from the back.
Do we need any more descriptive nonsense? No. It's lifeless, limp and broken at the spine. Stamp this trendy flash-in-the-pan out while you still can.