Starsailor
Poor Misguided Fool

EMI executive number 1: "Maybe we should give up on this album now?"

EMI executive number 2: "Nah, listen, there's still another track we haven't realeased with actual electric guitars and a bit of pace. Lets have James Walsh wear obscene amounts of make-up in the video and flog a few more copies of 'Love Is Here' to Toploader fans!"

As a result of something possibly a little like that, it comes about that Starsailor are heading for a 5th top 40 hit from their debut album (with, incidentally, only their 3rd self-written b-side). If overpublicising an album is ordinarily a poor move, from an album as lacklustre as 'Love Is Here' it looks even stupider. 'Fever', 'Good Souls', 'Alcoholic' and 'Lullaby', much maligned as they may have been, actually stood out a mile as the best songs on it, and there it should have been left. Instead we get this ugly mess.

The guitar riff from the Manics' 'Ocean Spray', some plinky-plonky piano bits, and lots of agonised wailing all add together to...nothing. This song does absoluetly nothing for me at all, just chugs along drably for a few minutes to the downright painful "You cover up bulletholes!" climax.

Disappointing as it was, at least most of their album sounded like potentially good songs ruined by over-production and over-dramatism, and faintly hinted that given more time to develop they might possibly have made a decent album, but this empty shell of a song doesn't even do that.

On this basis, a future of ever-increasing mediocrity beckons for Starsailor. Sad, but not really surprising.