Frankly, my dears…
Today’s album (and I’m trying to do one a day, this week) has been No More Cities by The Dears. Uncut loved it. Me, I’m not so sure.
They’re Canadian, but it’s clear the swallowed the Smiths whole during their teens (one track is called Postcard from Purgatory and they admit as much in their first par of their online bio). And the problem is, I was never really into the Smiths.
It also sounds a bit like Neil Hannon’s Divine Comedy. And, as hard as I try, I’m not really into that, that much either.
They use a lot of punctuation in their song titles. And not just exclamation marks! The Second track, for example is ‘Who Are You, Defenders Of The Universe?’. It’s probably the best on the album, and at sometime in the future, I’ll probably put it on a compilation CD for someone, but I’ve listened to it quite a few times and can’t quite work out how/ whether/if the title refers to it.
It also made me think whether there’s a single other track I could think of with a comma and question mark in it.
If this doesn’t sound like a completely gushing recommendation: well, it isn’t. Not bad. But not quite worth crossing the road for.