Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 24/03/08
Label: Polydor

It's almost unbelievable that Guillemots exist at all in 2008. There's not a starlet among them, nor a genre du jour shaped peg to hang them on and, rather uncomfortably, they evoke the spirit of mid '80s sophisto-pop, peddling widescreen clever-clever music with singalong choruses for grown-ups. How on earth have this major label signed act endured with seemingly no marketable qualities? Well, that'll be the songs. Huge, symphonic dispatches with barrelling verses and choruses like sky-bound fireworks.

On "Red", there are 11 of them; each and every one, with a little stylistic tweaking, a worthy single contender for say, Girls Aloud ("Last Kiss"), Justin Timberlake ("Big Dog") or Will Young (on soulful stand-out "Falling Out of Reach"). Of course, this doesn't necessarily make for a great record. You want to like it, to admire the freewheeling invention, the undeniable melodic suss and the questing emotional honesty.

But time and time again, this patchy album is dragged down by obscenely flashy production, a surfeit of ideas that conspire only to sabotage the songs themselves and writ large across it all, Fyfe Dangerfield's interminable, platitudinous emoting. Fans of first record "Through The Windowpane" are immediately pitched an awkward curveball with two ham-fisted appropriations of contemporary R&B. Opener "Kriss Kross" sweeps aside the sprawling arrangements of their debut in favour of jabbing strings and grotty bass that wouldn't sound out of place on a Backstreet Boys record.

This approach continues on "Big Dog", the hulking loops clearly aiming for the slam and drama of Timbaland et al, but both instances are a fist-in-mouth disaster. It gets worse, with a sequence of four brassy bangers at the heart of "Red" almost certain to have you reaching for the valium. "Clarion" is like some shiny ethno-pop soundtrack to an ad for a Far Eastern airline and "Cockateels" makes a similar effort with spiralling Bollywood strings and choirs.

Amongst this run of commendably experimental tunes, the end product is all too rich and sickly, like some garish gateaux topped with a glut of discrepant flavours. Even worse, each number is hampered by Dangerfield's gushing sentiment. Like some wide-eyed am dram lead he blunders from cliché to truism with unwieldy howlers like "Dealing with the real world is sometimes not too fun" or "Tears that catch on fire and dance with my desire", all making for supremely uncomfortable listening.

There's some respite in the final section of the album where the tempo drops and the songs are given a little more breathing space. "Take Me Home" wouldn't embarrass Chris Martin and "Words" unfurls gracefully with a gently chugging bass line, but again the effect is undone by the introduction of needless stuttering cut-up drums. Guillemots are clearly capable of great things. Either they temper the reckless experimentation or perhaps revert to a career writing hits for pop puppets. Right now the latter would be preferable.

    by Jim Brackpool