Dirty Vegas - 'One' (Parlophone)
3/5
By: Kevin Molloy
Despite not even arriving until halfway through the first song, the words are what hit you first when you listen to 'One'. Unfortunately, it's not favourably. A veritable deluge of irrelevant smooches gush from those supposedly 'dirty' lips. We would list them, but it would be too painful, suffice to sample but two; 'The only thing worth living for is love', and for your culinary pleasure, 'You've waited for so long to be where you are and where you're coming from.' The vomitarium? Certainly, this way sir.
Forgive the slight bitterness, we're all for happy smiles and musicians that don't have to lead tortured existences, but something with the slightest inkling of insight, sincerity or even, godamn it, interest would be like a cigarette to a five-day bout of particularly severe cold-turkey. F**king wonderful.
So, our disappointment exorcised, this album is by no means a complete failure. It is perhaps the curse of all new talents that win a well-recognised prize (for Vegas, it was a Grammy for 'Days Go By') that the follow-up will bow beneath expectations. (Dizzee's a lovable exception to our proposition, but he's just a rascal...). Yet DV have offered up a lovingly crafted slice of aural relaxation. Close your eyes and glowsticks will twirl at the end of pendulent arms, neon trails fill your vision as we softly float through a panoramic ocean of swaying bodies, glazed eyes and smiling faces.
And these songs could be truly anthemic, if they weren't all so similar. The chilled harmonies and soaring chorus lines will try to persuade you otherwise, but it's not just the drugs that will leave your average club-goer clueless as to what they just listened to. The blandness of the lyrics has its partner in the really rather unchallenging and unchanging sound of the LP.
Yet that sound contains some progressions, of sorts: the drums are computer-generated, no more, and it shows. Yes, they're still being looped and rounded off a little, but with a mini-orchestra swooning in the background to boot, there's a real sense of depth in the sound that was lacking before. It's just a shame those depths aren't really being explored. If this LP lived in the ocean, it'd be in the boring deserty bit of continental shelf, but if it could just shuffle over a bit, to where everything drops into an abyss... Timeless albums come from down there - LPs that are damn scary with hooks, claws and teeth; but the startlingly beautiful and mysterious come from the same place.
So maybe we're being hard on Dirty Vegas. But in saying this album is harmless enough, we have to confess it lacks in aesthetic to balance it out. Fine fare for a middle-of-the bay kind of follow-up, but they'll need to cast the net much wider next time.
Artists in this article: Dirty Vegas
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