NEW YORKE DULL
UNBELIEVABLE TRUTH
Almost Here (Virgin)
When Andy Yorke sings, "It's not enough / And it's all I've got" on 'Solved', you can't help thinking that the opening track of your debut album isn't really the most auspicious moment for that kind of confession. And it's pretty much the chief thought that this record provokes until the tape clicks off and there's a realisation that the clock hands have moved, the sky has darkened and yet there's no discernable trace that any music has passed through this time or space.
'Almost Here' is supernaturally dull, vaporised by its earnestness, repeating a shorthand of intensity that most pop-literate souls would grasp and discard as quickly as downing a pint.
There can be few people in the world who can have more cause to wish that they were an only child than Andy Yorke. He might share genes and genres with Thom, but he must feel a certain twinge of empathy with Cain every so often. If he made aneurysm-bursting speed garage or aimed to be the male Celine Dion, there might be fewer invidious comparisons, but as it is, Unbelievable Truth have enough of a resemblance to Radiohead -serious, sensitive, the usual- to make it unavoidable. Yet while Radiohead fans find themselves challenged by coruscating bile and encrypted emotions, the only challenge 'Almost Here' offers is sticking matchsticks under your eyelids to stop the onslaught of sleep.
True, there's no point in harping on about discrepancies, and it's not that these are repellently bad songs -just modest, coffee-house indie pumped up with arena steroids, by a support band stuck under a sunlamp in the hope they'll put on a growth spurt of Verve proportions.
Most mid-league indie bands have a few ballads they play to prove their, huh, versatility, those vaguely Verve-like songs that cause confused audiences to wake up five minutes later with their foreheads resting against a beer-splashed wall. Unbelievable Truth have dedicated their whole album to those moments, covered in a grey shroud of non-specific angst, attempting to sound like they're under the influence of some virulent existential crisis rather than merely under sedation. Even the radio-in-the-bath distortion of 'Same Mistakes', the Tori Amos piano tastefulness on 'Stone' and the string adornments of 'Finest Little Space' aren't enough to crank this record up beyond the level of mournful cliché. The unpalatable truth is that this is a sincere, well-intentioned record in a world that needs it like a double appendicectomy. Useful only as road music for somnanbulists, 'Almost Here' will knowck you out. Cold. (4)
