Friday, 27 July 2007

SIX BY SEVEN – THE WAY I FEEL TODAY (BEGGARS BANQUET)


SIX BY SEVEN – THE WAY I FEEL TODAY (BEGGARS BANQUET)

Hailing from Nottingham Six By Seven where a strange proposition, a band that never quite seemed to find a single identity as they proceeded to spread themselves quite thinly in search of some kind of success and acclaim balance, of which they both good in relatively successful degrees but not really enough to make a long career out of.

Perhaps the band tried too hard. Certainly I recall in interviews how the singer (name not remembered) liked to boast of the band’s scary background in Nottingham and how violent his background was. Having friends in Nottingham you were able to believe the stories about the place but not necessary his position in the partaking of such moments and there laid the rub. They were convincing no one. Six By Seven were ultimately a band that did not fit in which was a bad thing when you sensed that they so wanted to.

This was their third album by which time I think their opportunity/chance had passed them by. Never really accepted by the rock audience in the way say a Muse were in a way despite their alternative noise leanings (badly executed) they were slipping into Mansun territory with elongated pieces that would seen them gazing at their shoes and a dozen record label procured pedals.

It is not to say that they weren’t without their moments as this record indeed pulls out of the blocks in impressive fashion but it is in a blustering manner rather than a devastating one. More or less everything they did felt like a business decision.

With tracks such as “Flypaper For Freaks” there is a genuine visceral charge attached to proceedings (likewise with “Speed Is In, Speed Is Out”) but when things begin to droop they do so in negatively spectacular fashion as they severely peter out.

A song such as “Karen O” displays the worst kind of jagged sound being sculpted and reduced into some kind of Marillion territory. Later when things attempt to become deep and meaningful with “American Beer” it just feels cheesy and overblown with an overriding sense of trying too hard exhibiting vocals that actually remind me of Peter Gabriel at his most trite.

Over the course and duration of the album they wheel out a number of lengthy and fuzzy noise tunes but these don’t ever really seem to go or get anywhere. Perhaps it might work on a Primal Scream record but there the sound would be equipped with beats to bolster and shoulder the abandon through.

If I hadn’t already heard it done better it might have been less shit.

Thesaurus moment: fish.

Six By Seven
Beggars Banquet

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