The Black Soul Strangers’ ‘Animate’ has been getting some rave reviews recently. NME, Radio 2, Joe Wiley, Fearne Cotton …all been singing their praises. Unfortunately, as much as I want to, I won’t be joining them in their gushes.
Musically, I actually like a lot of it, and that’s what’s annoying me. I should be telling you that Black Soul Strangers are my new favourite band. There are shades of the Chilli Peppers in there, some definite Coldplay influence, and no doubt they’ve been listening to a lot of A.F.I circa 2006. Also individually, the instruments sound great. It’s professionally produced, the drums lay down a superb rhythm, the bass is nice and chunky and again, we get an infusion of A.F.I/Green Day riffs on guitar. Vocally too, Barry Gorey sounds excellent, swinging somewhere between the Eels Mr E, and Matthew Bellamy from Muse.
So what’s the problem then? Well, with all those influences vying for attention, the album starts to sound confused. On the track ‘Lies’ for example, we start in the punk-esqe direction, but somewhere in the middle we start hitting pop chart territory. Sometimes this can work for a band – see My Chemical Romance for example – but Black Soul Strangers can’t quite seem to pull it off.
This I could forgive, if it wasn’t for the lyrics. I’m really not sure what Gorey and drummer Brendan O’Mahony were aiming for, but what should have been an emotion-fused assault to match the musical energy, starts to sound like they were written in full teenage angst mode. It’s almost like the Strangers’ sixteen year old brother swapped their song book with his poetry he writes alone crying at night.
I want to like this band. I do. I’m almost there. I know I’ll eat my words as this band becomes ‘next big thing’ in 2011, and I’ll happily admit I was wrong. For me however, they’ve not quite arrived yet. I’ll be paying attention though.
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