Pop fans, despair no longer. If you feel that today's music is somehow missing something, rejoice. BBMak know exactly what you need. The return of Savage Garden.
This, the Brit boyband's second album, pitches its tent firmly over the grave of the Australian medirockrities. That polished FM radio sound is lovingly exhumed, complete with moody strumming and yearning harmonies. The cunning tykes have even stolen Darren Hayes' rhyming dictionary, a crucial aid to composing songs that wallow in the mud of their own cliché. No observation is too banal, no couplet too obvious, as long as you can hit a few sincere high notes.
So, to quote from the book of BBMak wisdom, "only love will get you through the night". "Nothing lasts forever", we are informed, although "you don't know what you've got til its gone." They even suggest that "good things come to those who wait", though anyone who listens to the whole of this album may be less sure.
Because, frankly, this is perhaps the most life drainingly dull album released in this or any other year. BBMak make a lot of their prowess as musicians and songwriters, but whilst they're perfectly adequate musicians, they've managed to compose exactly a quarter of a tune in the last two years, and that belongs to Bryan Adams anyway.
Flop single 'Out Of My Heart' leads the charge, and its sprightly tempo leads it skipping straight into no-chorus hell. It sounds something like a recent album filler by the Manics, but is even more forgettable. 'Staring Into Space' was co written by Guy Chambers, but without Robbie Williams' arch persona the song collapses into an embarrassed Eagles pastiche. Nonetheless, it is probably the best thing here.
There are moments where something more interesting pokes out from under the FM gloss. The dreary 'After All Is Said And Done' has a moody beat that seems to have got lost on its way to a Tricky album, whilst the painfully emotive 'Sympathy' descends into slashing James Bond strings for a few surreal seconds. But these interludes are brief, and always lead the way to an identical chorus of straining high notes where there should be melody.
They're big in the states, apparently, but this is a riddle for greater minds than this one to solve. BB Mak: as polished and bright as a 'Baywatch' babe's smile, but without the talent.
