3 keepers
keeper avg .231
Saying the band has a fascination for David Bowie and T.Rex is an understatement, if only for Royston Langdon's vocal delivery on the big single "Meantime"****, ranging from a soft and mannered to full-throated croon. Royston dominates the verses with a bouncing and shimmying bass line to be countered by his brother Antony's crunching guitar choruses. Bowie's combination of singer-songwriter acoustic and electric glam can also be heard on "Starside", "Ship Wrecked", "The Last Dictator"****, his version of British pop-blues can be heard on "Spacehog", and the band channels Marc Bolan's folky side on the first "Never Coming Down" and the album closer "To Be A Millionaire". "Cruel To Be Kind", "Never Coming Down (Part II), and "Space Is The Place" are your average sanitized power-pop punk tracks in the mode of Urge Overkill, though the latter has some head-scratching lines referencing kissing your brother, being gay, then f-ing him (is this a slang "brother" - I doubt if it's a literal brother but what do I know). The band exhibits a unique approach and nimble work on the more buoyant, space-y tracks such as "Candyman" and "Only A Few," though they aren't against grand, stately statements such as the over-reaching "Shipwrecked," 3 and a half minutes of slow Bowie crooning with another minute and a half of the same chords louder; the penultimate track "Zeroes"***** seems to be going down the same plodding path until the cascading "zeroes zeroes zeroes" chorus is the best hook on the album. While frequently derivative and not the strongest in the hook department at least their influences are good ones that help the band rise above the typical mid-decade second-generation grunge of the time.
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