Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 17/07/06
Label: Mercury Records

Oh dear. A few months ago, your humble correspondent suggested that Razorlight seemed to have got their act together and were about to deliver a great second album. Boy, did we get that wrong. "Razorlight" couldn't be more of a turkey if it came with serving instructions and a box of Christmas crackers.

It didn't have to be this way. See, unpleasant as he may be, Johnny Borrell is heavily loaded with talent. He proved that on "Up All Night", a debut album replete with inspired pop hooks and sparky rock'n'roll attitude. And in the run-up to its release Razorlight played some electrifying shows that damn-near restored your faith in rock'n'roll. Then, spectacularly, the wheels came off the wagon.

The rot set in with "Somewhere Else", a sickeningly pompous one-off single that found Borrell wailing like a tubercular Rod Stewart. By the summer of '05 he was prancing about in a white suit, sending festival audiences to sleep with the help of a gospel choir and - at Live 8 - comparing himself to John Lennon before a large fraction of the world's population.

With memories of "Golden Touch" and "Stumble and Fall" fading, one hoped that some time off might help Borrell recover from tour 'flu' and egomania. Sadly not. On "Razorlight", he sounds like he's fresh from a lobotomy. Once we get past the single "In the Morning" - an agreeably chirpy song about hangovers - we're suddenly confronted with what sounds like a Barry Manilow impression on the ersatz soft-pop anthem "Who Needs Love?" What's Borrell aiming for here? Airtime on "Wake Up To Wogan"?

Similar questions arise during "Can't Stop This Feeling I've Got" and "Pop Song 2006" (a cringe-worthy homage to REM's "Pop Song '89"). As with much of "Razorlight", these songs are notable for their lyrical blandness: Borrell used to undercut his sugary melodies with barbed one-liners ("If it's LOVE I'll see you later," he memorably sang on "VICE"), but now he's going for Hallmark-card clichés in a bid for unit-shifting everyman appeal. No longer does he take literary inspiration from Patti Smith; instead he just tries to sing like her, with calamitous results, on songs like "Hold On".

As the record wears on, Borrell goes all 'bombastic' on us, with the horrendous "Kirby's House" (a lowlight from the festival appearances) giving way to a blustery "Back To The Start" before "Los Angeles Waltz" closes things off with a charmless moan about the pressures of touring. Ultimately, with just two pleasant interruptions - "In the Morning", which is old news, and "America", a slightly dumb but strangely affecting rumination on Borrell's spiritual homeland - "Razorlight" tells a torpid tale

Did you know Johnny Borrell was kicked out of The Libertines for being "too boring"?

    by Niall O'Keeffe