Yahoo! Music Review

Released on 26/03/07
Label: V2

Beware the big-headed singer with ideas above his humble station. Double beware when that singer is Stereophonics frontman Kelly Jones, he of the Napoleon complex and paint stripper voice, releasing a ten-track concept album about, like, wimmin. And yes, you do take the title literally. Each song is named after, and tells the story of, a girl with the kind of name that suggests a chalkboard line-up of a cheap strip joint - Misty, Violet, Liberty and Summer all stepping-up to take their turn around the greasy pole of Jones' songwriting.

Speaking about the album, Jones and producer Jim Lowe have claimed they were aiming at the likes of Nick Cave's "Murder Ballads", or the work of Tom Waits and Bob Dylan - laughable statements were they not so depressingly arrogant. Instead of Stereophonics' anthemic stadium bluster, "Only The Names Have Been Changed" is built from acoustic guitar, languid electric pickings, and tacked-on string inflections ham-fistedly intended to be "weeping". Despite the fact that the record was apparently recorded live in just a few days, the music feels ludicrously over-produced and pompous. The guitars are played earnestly, as if to convey the gravitas of Kelly's tales.

For while he might be a canny lad when it comes to capturing the male psyche confined within the damp grey walls of a small town, Jones' attempts at female characters fly wide of the mark. "Katie", for example, couldn't afford to pay her taxi fare, so shagged the driver and, guess what, rather enjoyed it. It's the kind of story a Stereophonics fan might crack one off to in the back of his "Readers Wives", and at odds with the murky build that makes for the best track, musically speaking, on the album. "Violet" was apparently inspired by the prostitute murders in Ipswich. It is, needless to say, crass in the extreme.

It's not that this is a pretentious album - lad of the lads Jones is careful of avoiding that - it's just it's a flatulently self-indulgent one that displays a profound lack of awareness. Take "Emily", for example. Jones claims it's influenced by Mazzy Star, which seems to mean the employment of a repeated country twang as Jones' voice saws away any of the delicacy that would make a comparison with the '90s legends valid. "Jean", while a tense, dynamic song, is delivered with a bitterness that verges on the misogynistic. The fairer sex might be Kelly's heroes and inspirations on "Only The Names Have Been Changed" - but it's clear he understands them not one jot.

    by Luke Turner