I sometimes wonder whether the Rickenbacker factory, like some radioactivity-spewing former Soviet power station, should have tonnes of concrete poured into it and be dropped into the nearest vacant mine-shaft, for the long-term good of the human race. Otherwise, tedious jangle-pop like this will continue to belch out for decade upon decade, gradually lowering our spirits to the point where we conclude that the Taliban had it right all along and outlaw music itself.
The Graceful Slicks don’t have any pretensions to being of this century, describing themselves as “what happens when parents subject their children to their old record collection”, and their take on the Byrds is to speed it up a bit, punk it up a bit and drop the sweet, hopeful harmonies. The result is mostly adolescent, amateurish and forgettable. ‘I’m Not the Only One’ is pure youth club battle-of-the-bands, with the band churning out dodgy solos, and dim, self indulgent lyrics by the bucketful. ‘Modern Life makes me want to die’ moans Lewis Burke-Smith, which is presumably why the band feels the need to retreat into the music of half a century ago for comfort. But why should the rest of us, trying to make sense of the twenty first century, follow them there?
‘Bravery Through Repetition’ has a decent devil-in-music opening riff, but turns to flab very quickly through (you’ve guessed it) vain repetition. When it eventually tires of the opening gambit, the song ambles into some vague, spacey, arrhythmic kenoma before realising that the intro wasn’t so bad after all and returns there with its tail between its legs. Burke-Smith’s singing throughout is painfully circumscribed by a lack of range and expressive quality. ‘The End’ borrows unprofitably from REM’s ‘Drive’, though I quite like the hi-hat figure which runs through it, a lone silver thread running through a ball of mud.
It’s not the fact of young musos finding inspiration in the past that bugs me about all this. Rather it’s the unworthy objects of their affection. The Byrds couldn’t write a song to save their lives (all their best stuff turned out to be cover versions) and the Brian Jonestown Massacre, another obvious influence, seem to have provided the Slicks with an alibi for sloppy musicianship and a singing style that suggests the vocalist is barely compos mentis. This might have passed muster in Haight-Ashbury circa 1967, but in 2010 it just sounds like kids playing with toys.