Back in the heady days of Britpop, rumours circulated to the effect that, so enamoured was he of their “Alright” video, Steven Spielberg himself had offered to make Supergrass the stars of their own Monkees-style TV show. The offer was either declined or fictional, like Gaz Coombs modelling for Calvin Klein, and it never happened.
Fast-forward a decade and the record company Midas has not only revived the concept but created a phenomenon with McFly. With two singles and this very album straight in at Number One, they’ve turned the anonymous looking Danny, Tom, Dougie and Harry into the millennial equivalents of Mickey, Mike, Pete and Davey. On the surface, at least. The TV show might remain a pipe dream – for now – but the concept of emulating the most successful act of the day, only in a fluffier, even-less-threatening manner, is a fait accompli. To Busted’s Beatles come McFly’s Monkees; job done, ker-ching!
“Room On The 3rd Floor” opens with the two Number Ones in swift succession, the half ’60s, half Green Day “5 Colours In Her Hair” and the strangulated, Oasis-y “Obviously”. The equally Gallagher-indebted title track is allegedly autobiographical, about their two months spent in a posh London hotel while waiting for deployment. Well, it’s hardly a Libertines-esque squat in the East End: “Hear the guest upstairs complaining/About the room that’s got their TV too loud…”
Thereafter, tracks fall into two camps. “That Girl”, “Saturday Night”, “Down By The Lake” and “Surfer Babe” are all spoof ’50s rock’n’roll numbers that invoke Showaddywaddy more than Bill Hailey or early Beach Boys, presumably in order to justify their “Back To The Future”-inspired band name. Then come the ‘alternative’ songs. “Hypnotised” is a little bit country, “Met This Girl” a lazy British Invasion-style singalong, “She Left Me” is a shimmering, instantly forgettable ballad and “Unsaid Things” a jolly re-working of “Disco 2000”: “That girl that moved just up the road from me… Now she’s got pregnant with her ba-a-aby… I’ve still go so many unsaid thing that I wanna say.”
“Not Alone” is their “Sleeping With The Lights On” and last track “Broccoli” is an unsubtle metaphor for losing their collective virginity, with a touch of “Killer Queen”. There’s also a hidden song, the yearning acoustic “Get Over You”, which you have to sign up to the VIP section of their website to hear (and which seemingly doesn’t work on computer playback…).
Ultimately, in attempting to differentiate themselves from most of their contemporaries with the ’60s-stylings yet maintain a continuity with Busted middle-eights (baby-faced James co-wrote eight of the 14 tracks herein), every bit of McFly sounds over-familiar and uninspired. It’s undeniably preferable to just another identikit Westlife or Blue, but for now McFly – sorely lacking the combined charisma of Matty, Charlie et al – are an identity crisis in search of a sound.
