Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 20/06/05
Label: Parlophone

One of the year's more thought-provoking debuts, but not, alas, in a good way. What it provokes is the thought of an increasingly bare cupboard being rummaged. In the casting call for the 80s guitar-band version of "Stars In Their Eyes", it's clear that The Departure turned-up quite a bit later than Interpol and The Killers, and had to settle for what remained when Joy Division, Duran Duran and all the other sublime or ridiculous icons were taken. To judge by a peevishly stentorian "Lump In My Throat", our five Northampton boys are mostly being, Matthew, The Bolshoi.

Or, if you prefer, and are old enough for "Dirty Words" to elicit memories of a stack of LPs you haven't seen, much less played, in years, they're offering an uncannily accurate recreation of an era's also-rans. It's an admirably thorough, but choppy and strangely passionless, mish-mash of arena-years Simple Minds, U2-alike nonentities Zerra One ("Just Like TV"), the scarf-swirling side of The Mission ("Only Human"), Numanoid vocal mannerisms ("All Mapped Out"), decline-and-fall Psychedelic Furs and Depeche Mode ("Time", "Changing Pilots") at their least magnificent.

Indeed, it's hard to work out quite what The Departure are for. Other than a spot-the-anachronism exercise for one generation, and, for the benefit of the next, a working demonstration of all those billowing swathes of windswept chords, lurking bass guitars and alternately skittering and portentous tempos. And the suspicion that we're shortly to see some videos featuring frowning, sucky-cheeked band members jogging in slow motion after mysterious ladies in big shoulder pads.

Ultimately, the brooding, bruise-purple, shimmering guitars are the best thing about "Dirty Words" by a mile, thanks to Steve Osborne's production and Alan Moulder's grandiloquent mix: certain twenty-second snatches will have some oldsters all misty-eyed and some kids darn impressed. But balance that out against fretful, cliché'd lyrics about mirrors, cameras and alienation and - aside from "Arms Around Me" - a worrying lack of killer tunes, and there's little in The Departure to justify the trip.

    by Jennifer Nine