If we have learned anything at all from pop's rich history it is surely this. Never trust a band who allow themselves to be caricatured by a cartoon illustrator. Let's face it, it did nothing for the musical credibility of The Osmonds, The Jacksons and The Beatles, so why should anyone else be any different? Bearing this in mind, then, the debut album by Ontario's Len, plastered as it is with gaudy comic strip style cartoon images of the band, does not fill one with a great deal of confidence.
Just to prove that you should always judge a book, or in this case a CD, by its cover, it only takes a couple of listens to 'You Can't Stop The Bum Rush' before it becomes patently obvious that Len are not really in the business of innovation. The album is basically a bewildering mish mash of musical styles that gives the distinct impression that intensive focus group analysis has been conducted prior to this album being written, in order that audience potential could be maximised.
As a result we are treated to Old Skool hip hop on the Beastie Boys derivative 'Cryptik Souls Crew', retro Kraut pop in the form of 'The Hard Disk Approach', cheesy college rock a la Blink 182 on 'Cheeky Bugger', and over the top Mariah Carey esque gospel madness on the tear jerking closing track 'Crazy Cause I Believe'.
Len's lack of a musical identity is not always a bad thing. There are moments in this whistle stop tour of eighties and nineties musical motifs that are vaguely diverting, if only in a slightly bleary eyed, nostalgic kind of way. The upshot of it all, however, is that Len emerge with about as much integrity as your average musically multi tasking wedding singer. This is probably slightly unfair given that the styles that have been blatantly stolen here have been meticulously copied in a very knowing manner. Len are clearly very well up on their pop music, it's just that their pop music was somebody else's pop music first and to be honest it sounded rather better the first time around.
