Friday, August 22, 2008

Album Review: Wonderfools

Wonderfools
'|Too Late To Die Young'
(Wild Kingdom Records)

A strange brew of power pop and vintage rock courtesy of Norway

I had some rather towering hopes for this album based on nothing but the design of it’s front cover which I do remain quite impressed with.. Sadly my one dimensional premise was as depthless and incorrect as it quite rightly deserved to be and the expectations I idiotically built around something as contradictory as a record cover are smashed. Tragically, the front image may just shade it when it comes to what’s good about this album.

There was a very specific brand of wishy washy rock music that rambled across areas of the 80’s both here and in other parts of Europe. It had very little to say for itself and never accomplished much in its life outwith being piped around a supermarket or quietly soothing the inhabitants of elevators. Familiar with the genre I speak of? That is what the greater majority of this record seems to be fashioned with. It’s all very faceless and  soul-less with no real direction or purpose. Everything just collides with itself and limps around making very little sense. A half hearted emergence of sound which seems to have been generated by crossing soft rock with pop is possibly the foundations on which the rest has been piled. The songs are not identical to one another but I sure think they all share the same father! A common thread snakes through the heart of everything - but again it serves little purpose and loses the plot very early on.

I really have dug deep, three times, in the search for something I can come away with that will maybe paper over the cracks that extend the length of this record but there is a terrible lack of anything  better than slightly bland. Wonderfools really wont set the world on fire with this. It’s a great shame but this album will very quickly disappear from view and it’s highly unlikely to feel daylight on it’s impressive front cover ever again.

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