Not Slaughter

Sometimes you just a little bit of bad.  A meal with no vitamins, minerals or dietary fibre at all, preferably fried and served on white bread*.  It just hits the spot, it’s what you need, you may not like yourself for it, it isn’t what you could cope with too often but this time your internal organs will just have to lip up and deal with it.

Basically this is one of those awesomely insightful metaphor thingys that I specialize in for Razorlight Up All Night, their debut LP from those far off ancient days of 2004.  They were, briefly, Brit indie darlings and they cut a good, noisy swathe through many an indie club night and festival bill before everyone got heartily sick of them** and they made a duff follow-up album.  Ah well.

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If you can get past it’s truly pants cover art Up All Night can be a really good time if you blast it out whilst you’re in the right mood.  Forget subtlety, ignore some of the pretension and just bob up and down to the right bits, nostalgically remembering bars and bras you visited.

Razorlight were good and tight and they played every track like it was potentially their last shot at making a record.  At their very best they broke no barriers but belted out some great energised pop songs, that kinda hinted at all sorts of other bands’ golden ages but never quite sounded like them.

I would happily go to bat for the likes of ‘Golden Touch’ ‘Rip It Up’ and ‘Leave me Alone’ all good barnstorming indie tunes, with the emphasis on t-u-n-e-s.  It’s the kind of rock that only tightly-trousered, skinny young folks with nice hair can make; clearly something to do with their jeans genes.  There are some frills in the shape of piano and string touches but it’s mere garnish for the main course, best served loud and snotty.

Every moment of Up All Night is about having a good time, except the couple of tunes which are about either wanting to have a good time or the failure to have said good time. ‘Rip It Up’ perfectly captures the sound and sensation of whirling and stumbling around too pissed to care about tomorrow.  This is about as profound as Razorlight get:

Still you rack 'em up, knock 'em back
Line 'em up, put 'em down
Have a little taste, then you look about     (Which Way Is Out)

You know what? it works.  ‘Get It And Go’ actually captures the sound of cocaine on LP, empty, loud and utterly self-serving; it could not be whiter if it were a Columbian sandwich served on (ooh, the decadence!) white bread.  It entertains for a while but then I split and head for healthier, more nuanced company.

There are a trio of real, umm, highs on Up All Night.  I like the kinda sexy ‘In The City’ where the-greatest-songwriter-of-this-or-any-other-generation unashamedly rips off Patti Smith’s ‘Gloria’, to great effect it has to be said.  Another goodie is ‘Don’t Go Back To Dalston’ which despite being utterly full of hot air and flash, always conjures up a good mood.

My real favourite tune though is ‘Vice’, which is reason I shelled out for Up All Night in the first place.  It pulls off the trick of sounding absolutely new and classic at the same time, our Johnny getting all hot and bothered over some chick or other, grafted onto a superb chorus.  I rather like the video of all the rude postcards in the ‘phone box too, but that’s just me all over:

Add in a couple of clunkers, a certain charm deficit and the aforementioned shite LP cover and that was, effectively, all she wrote for Razorlight*^.

Up All Night is a damned good time and a better LP than I remembered, but it remains a guilty junk food fix to be indulged every so often, regretted and then looked forward to again.

And the boys over at the bar
Yeah they're mixing up their medicine
The girls were on their mobile trying to get reception
Johnny's shadow's getting long but he keeps on singing
His shadow getting long but he keeps on singing         (In The City)

Umm, thanks for that greatest-songwriter-of-this-or-any-other-generation. 

995 Down.

PS: Not to be confused with Slaughter Up All Night, who remain the worst professional band I ever saw live. Fact!

PPS: Reasons to be cheerful part 1:

*hailing from a wholefood-y hippy background it was drummed into me from an early age that there was no greater sin in the world than white bread.  Thirty years after leaving home, I still feel slightly naughty if I eat it.

**lead singer Johnny Borrell, whilst good at what he did, was prone to being an utter tit in interviews, comparing his song writing talents favourably to Dylan and other greats for example^.  Then members of the band kept getting fired/leaving and there were fistfights etc.  (I didn’t remember that last bit, that was courtesy of my mate Ste H – please note that, all you expensive London libel lawyers).

^in his defence I believe there may have been some kind of misquote: I think he may possibly have been comparing his sign writing abilities favourably to Dylan^^.

^^who to be fair, whilst he was pretty good at songs and related stuff, was a fuck awful sign writer; wobbly hands.  True story.

*^yeah I know their biggest single was on the follow-up album, but this is my version of things.