Painfully Derivative
Some reviews are quite easy to write; you listen to something and it immediately makes its mark on you. Whether it's good or not, you can easily cobble together a collection of adjectives and verbs et voila a review is born. But at the other end of the spectrum, some can be bloody difficult. West Midlands' Vert's 'Accepting Denial' is very much in the second category and very much like pulling those proverbial teeth everyone always goes on about. I sat for about an hour the other day trying to think of something clever or interesting to say about this but I just couldn't put those fingers to keys and did the usual procrastinating activities I do when I have something to do but can't be bothered to do it. The TV provided adequate distraction for a bit (Blue Suede Jew on BBC2 was excellent) as did my MP3 player (I love that little box of magic) and the biscuit tin. Sometimes average and mundane are hard to write about.
The only moderately interesting thing I could come up with that was Vert is the colour green in French fact fans - thank you Crayola with your embossed pencils telling me the colour as if I didn't know. As this deadline is ticking down to a close, my head is getting scratched and my nails shorted from the continual tapping against my desk as I try to eek out something vaguely of note to say. Well, here goes...
As my good, old Dad says 'There's nothing new under the sun' and none more is that apparent on 'Accepting Denial' as it is derivative in the extreme. Everything sounds like it could have been any other moderate rock band. Same detuned guitar sound, same voice – tinted with a bit of a yank drawl of course -, same beards... I'll retract that as it's a bit personal. It's an album which you can't wait to finish and not being able to write about it in any way makes it all the more painful and drawn out.
The intros to some of the songs are self indulgent in length and everything is so...so...formulaic. This is musical herpes; painful, irritating and you can't wait for the agony to be over.
Despite getting some reasonably good press from other sources, this is lack lustre and uninspired. At last I have reached the end; my suffering is over with this full stop.