Yahoo! Music Review

Released on 14/05/07
Label: Rough Trade

Occasionally, the humble record reviewer encounters something so appalling that mashing one's face into the keyboard seems the only true critical response. Unfortunately, that wouldn't make much of a read, and you probably deserve better. So: why is one moved to hate this here album so much? Let us count the ways.

First, some background. Hailing from Glasgow, 1990s comprise one member of Belle & Sebastian affiliates V-Twin and two members of The Yummy Fur, a band both popular among local indie snobs and the alma mater of two Franz Ferdinand members (Alex Kapranos and Paul Thomson). They're getting on a bit, these lads, and this is their Rough Trade-funded stab at Franz-style autumnal success. It's doomed to failure.

For starters, 1990s' brand of record-collection rock is so blatantly a try-on that it might as well be selling you loan insurance. The reference points are well-chosen enough: there's the odd lift from The Beach Boys, some raunchy '60s rock'n'roll, an air of '50s surf-pop innocence. Yet it all sounds cheap, insincere and thrown together: a watering down of the watered-down, more Teenage Fanclub than Big Star. What's more troubling, though, are Jackie McKeown's lyrics.

He makes reviewers' job simple by at one point singing a stanza that perfectly encapsulates all 1990s' problems: "Been smokin' too much weed now / I'm even scared of the telephone / And I don't even got one." First of all, that's obviously supposed to be funny, and it isn't. Secondly, "I don't even got one"? McKeown's a Scot, but you'd never guess it to listen to "Cookies", crammed as it is with talk of "precincts", "cherry Kool-Aid" and things being "outtasight". If this record were any more annoyingly American, it'd be threatening Iran with air strikes.

Drugs are a theme, not just on "Weed" but throughout. One obvious ode to narcotic indulgence ("Enjoying Myself") offers this future BBC worst-lyrics award front-runner: "Some people ask am I enjoying myself; I say, 'I haven't decided yet: I'm just enjoying myself.'" You're left with the stark realisation that, for all McKeown's talk of their merits, drugs have certainly contributed to some pretty boring records down the years, and "Cookies" is unquestionably one of them.

Towards its end, the sound of the barrel being scraped rings loud and true. "I'm thinking of not going", announces the penultimate track (do keep us posted, eh lads?) before the non-climactic "Situation", replete with a sad little false ending, tirelessly repeats the non-intriguing phrase "some kind of situation". What kind of situation? Is anything being said here? That 1990s have heads empty of anything but self-delusion becomes clear when McKeown sneers: "Cult status keeps me f*cking your wife." You've seen a photo of this guy, right?

    by Niall O'Keeffe