1990s - Cookies

1990s
Cookies

Scotland’s 1990s promise a lot. Rising from the ashes of The Yummy Fur, a band which at one stage boasted Franz Ferdinand’s Alex Kapranos and Paul Thomson, their debut album, Cookies, was produced by Bernard Butler with the help of Edwyn Collins.

However, the first noticeable thing about this trio from Glasgow is that there’s a swagger to their music which simply doesn’t sit right. Love them or hate them, the likes of Oasis and Kasabian do the arrogance thing convincingly and to great effect, but it just seems so contrived when 1990s attempt it. Similarly, their lyrics are often painfully ill-judged. “My cult status keeps me fucking your wife,” is the kind of spiteful line that would roll perfectly off Jarvis Cocker’s tongue, but when it’s delivered by the less charismatic 1990s frontman Jackie McKeown, it just sounds a little embarrassing. Maybe it’s supposed to be ironic, but I just don’t get the joke.

There are a couple of pleasing moments on Cookies, most notably See You At The Lights, which is as close to a fun romp as we get, with hand-claps and a chirpy chorus, but elsewhere it all feels a bit false - the try-hard delivery, the hackneyed glam-rock reminiscing and the attitude which swings between cheeky and conceited. While fellow Scotsmen The Fratellis unapologetically la-la-la their way through deliciously raucous tunes and Arctic Monkeys offer truthful, intelligent lyrics, 1990s have managed to land unsatisfactorily between the two. Ultimately, Cookies is neither clever enough nor fun enough to be anything other than an utter disappointment.