There is an inherent problem with many of the indie/dance bands coming out of the UK right now. Simply, they don’t seem to actually be especially skilled in fusing guitars and electro. While Does It Offend You, Yeah? recently offered a baffling album filled half with dance tracks and half with indie rock songs, Hadouken! have done the opposite in carelessly cramming a plethora of musical styles together in the doomed hope it will sound good.
Atop an ugly combination of indie, rave and grime, Music For An Accelerated Culture offers skinny jeans and Myspace as its typical subject-matter, yet isn’t half as clever as it thinks it is. While the likes of The Cribs and The Streets talk of the zeitgeist with wit and intelligence, when Hadouken! take a sideswipe at the scenesters during messy second track That Boy That Girl, it feels rather like they are throwing stones in glasshouses.
However, in amongst the mess there are a couple of positives. Declaration of War and Driving Nowhere demonstrate that Hadouken! are capable of crafting well-structured tracks, with frontman James Smith actually singing rather than offering the obnoxious spoken-word vocal that is generally all over their sound. Elsewhere, Liquid Lives is a good example of the few stirring moments, with Smith yelling “Drink, smoke, fuck, fight.” But, overall, Music For An Accelerated Culture is a big disappointment which, ultimately, will merely leave you longing for Klaxons to finally release another album and show everyone how this indie/dance thing should be done.
2 comments:
agreed. rubbish.
It's shit. The album, not the review.
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