SPEEDBOATS FOR BREAKFAST - ALBUM REVIEW

Speedboats For Breakfast - Speedboats For Breakfast 
Speedboats For Breakfast

I took my girlfriend out for dinner the other night and, whilst trying to choose where to go, we came across a place that said it did pizza, chinese, indian, steak and seafood. Now, as exciting as that sounds, the wise head on my old shoulders told me that anywhere trying to do everything well was probably not going to be much good at any one of those cuisines. And the same could be said of bands that claim to be 'not tied down to a specific genre' - laudable as it is to shirk the shackles of creativity stifling genre pigeon holes, it's usually more fruitful to do your musical mining from one coal face. This leads me nicely on to Speedboats For Breakfast (or Steve Parfitt as he is normally known down at the Dog and Duck) and the five tracks presented for our delectation. Things start out well enough with the 90s squelchy slow dance of 'You're More Trouble Than You're Worth' which sounds like a track that might have been rejected by Savage Garden's label for being a little too edgy.  

Moving on to 'Another Night' and the music shifts on to a Gary Glitter style blues glam stomp that lacks any real punch or swagger. 'Grrrlfriend' - yes, that's right - takes a stab a very, very early Blur mixed with the finesse of Oasis at their worst and the lyrical ingenuity of whoever writes for Olly Murs. On 'Do It Again' there is a swerve towards the more earnest end of the rock spectrum, almost attempting some prog rock structures but at nearly 5 minutes long it's too short to be a proper prog odyssey and it's far too long for a song in which almost nothing actually happens. To finish off with, we are presented with 'REVOLT', a track that would be at home somewhere towards the end of the Babylon Zoo album what with all it's moody, atmospheric electro noises but, again, nothing really happens and at a whopping eight minutes long, that's really saying something quite astonishing. None of this is bad music or poorly put together but I just don't know what message is trying to be conveyed other than "I've got a lot of fancy music production software and I'd like to show you just how I like to use it".



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