It is pretty well documented
that I am not the world’s greatest fan of Nottingham’s very own opportunistic
lucky flash in the pan Jake Bugg, although it is a common misconception that I
don’t like him. I don’t personally have anything against the lad, but as I have
said before on the radio; there are musicians in Nottingham that are far more
talented and far more deserving of the breaks that Bugg has had. Will Jeffery,
Josh Kemp, Ryan Thomas, and Josh Wheatly are four musicians randomly plucked
out of my head who not only play guitar and sing, but also play and guitar and
sing better than Jake Bugg could ever wish to. Jake Bugg’s success in purely
down to luck and clever management, which is why his rapid rise to superstardom
is so baffling. Why is Jake Bugg headlining the Capital FM Arena next year
while Captain Dangerous (for my money the best live band in Nottingham) are
playing the Jam Café? This city is littered with artists who we all thought
would break out of Nottingham but fizzled out at the last hurdle, so it’s a bit
galling for us that people from outside Nottingham think that Jake Bugg is a
fair representation of the music we are churning out every night of the week.
Jake’s debut album was the
first by a Nottingham musician to reach number one in the album chart, which of
course was greeted with much excitement by the sheep-like sections of the music
media who say they like any old shit just because it comes from Nottingham. I
listened to it. It was okay in places, but it didn’t contain anything that jumped
out and demanded your attention. His difficult second album comes out on
Monday, of which the public have already heard a handful of generic, bland Bugg
style music. If the songs that we have already heard are anything to go by,
then the bubble will burst fairly soon.
I have managed to get hold of
a copy of the new album by not strictly legal means. I didn’t go looking for
it, it was sent to me for my opinion as the sender wanted to know what I
thought about it (making this my first and last ‘request blog’). Having
listened to it, I suggest that Jake makes his next day off in Nottingham a weekday,
as the Job Centre will be open.
Everybody wondered how the
second album would compare, given how the first was about living on a working
class council estate in Clifton and he can’t keep singing about such a
lifestyle having travelled the world and living it up with proper rock stars.
He has somehow roped in Rick Rubin to produce Shangri-La,
and already dropped a bit of a bollock in an interview with Simon Wilson for The Nottingham Evening Post (as I still call it) by saying
that he had never heard of the man before. He also spoke out of his arse by
saying that he told a group of Memphis session musicians that they were doing
it wrong. Maybe I’d be proved wrong and this would be a brilliant album?
No.
‘There’s A Beast And We All
Feed It’, the thankfully quite short opening track sounds not unlike ‘Lightning
Bolt’, which in itself sounds like ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’. The second
track ‘Slumville Sunrise’ doesn’t fair much better although is a better song than the one before it,
helped along by the admittedly amusing video directed by Shane Meadows and
influenced by a meeting between The Keystone Cops and Benny Hill. ‘What Doesn’t
Kill You’ opens like a B-side or an album track by The Jam, and doesn’t get out
of first gear. ‘Me And You’ is a slower track which doesn’t so much draw on a Mersey
beat sound, but mixed with his other obvious influence of 1990s Oasis era
Britpop, forms a clumsy pastiche. The best song on the album (in my honest
opinion) is ‘Kingpin’, but that’s only because I secretly like a bit of Status
Quo and this song could have been a Quo concert favourite.
Thankfully he’s done away with the fake vinyl
crackle this time around; a special effects in production move that along with the fact that he works with
songwriters who have also written for Olly Murs and Will Young, makes a mockery
of his proclamation to being a breath of fresh air in an X-Factor
environment.
All in all, this isn’t a
terrible album. It certainly isn’t a classic though, which is a shame because
for someone who did show a lot of promise, Shangri-La has
moments where it feels rushed, as if he is aware that he needs to make the most
of every one of his precious fifteen minutes of fame. Jake Bugg might think
himself a mod, but he’s a mod in the same way that Kenny Everett’s Sid Snot
character was a punk; a cartoonish imagining of what he is supposed to look
like and behave.
Oh, and FYI; a palisade is a
kind of wall. The sky can’t be underneath one.
===
My daily blog can be delivered straight to your Kindle for 99p a month (link)
I’m raising money to make a film about The Sunday Alternative and put on a free screening, please read my latest newsletter.
My daily blog can be delivered straight to your Kindle for 99p a month (link)
I’m raising money to make a film about The Sunday Alternative and put on a free screening, please read my latest newsletter.
Any money donated to the PayPal account above will be
used to make films, podcasts, and other content that will be made available
free of charge.
