The Servant - 'The Servant' (Prolifica)
1/5
By: Maugan Lloyd
Commendable, The Servant are a band gunning for the coattails of the 90s Britpop C-list, yet still managing to miss the target by a country mile.
Opener 'Cells' paints a picture of a band with pretensions to Oasis; it's their rawk-epic, complete with the ubiquitous sub-Zep drums lifted like fetid shopping trolleys from the mud-banks beyond the broken levee. The album progresses as 'Beautiful Thing', 'Liquefy' and 'Body' lumber along with a listless Prozac blankness.
'Devil', though, starts well with an electronic grating morphing into a promising guitar rock-out - but it doesn't take long before the true colours of origin become blinding; this is the best track on the album, but it's still just Shed 7 doing Jane's Addiction. The vocals even start with the travesty of an obvious ape of a Perry Farrell scream, complete with echo from here to next Tuesday. But however much this band may also wish to be ocean-sized, they are just flailing about and struggling against a rising tide on the same, all-consuming mud-banks of this festering rivulet.
Soon, it seems like the work is an entry into the annual Most Obvious Couplet competition, with gems like, 'meet me at the cinema, you can take me in your car'; having said that, they're trying to get all the bases covered, as 'Not Scared, Terrified', is clearly their entry into this year's Chris Martin Award for Teenage Profundity. Although, it must have taken them a while to whittle down their shortlist of lyrical sagacity: 'when you make a cup of tea, you act like it's alchemy - but it's not', is a particular favourite. Maybe the kids will assume that there's more to it than meets the brain - however, the kids are smarter than The Servant can imagine.
This is an album that tries to do what The Farm did for Madchester, what The Spin Doctors did for funk-rock; but, on this form, servitude seems like a suitable aspiration.
Artists in this article: The Servant
Your Feedback
Login to post your comment