Album Review

Republic of Loose – Comeback Girl

• 15th Oct 2007

Ahhh! Sometimes music writers get a package plonked on their desks and the desire to tear the pathetic looking promotional CD to shreds is unimaginably strong, a desire we would presume is not too far removed from a lioness’s instinct to protect her cubs. Think of music as this lioness’s cub, it’s small and helpless and being infiltrated with all sorts of rubbish; to the extent that everyone seeking solace in the musical sanctum of mainstream music is proclaiming music to be on its last legs, dying of a proverbial disease, eaten from the inside out. Here we come to Republic of Loose’s new single, landing on someone’s desk in just the wrong moment of time. There are a lot of artists out there much like this one, jumping on the idea that music is in the past tense and bringing a decent following with them to disguise the fact that they really aren’t very good. There are others; Republic of Loose are not alone in their amalgamation of the mainstream.

We’d like to blame Outkast, afraid it all started with their annoying addictive ‘Hey Ya’ single but we’re afraid ‘Sorry Miss Jackson’ came long before that; bustling along in their wake were Gym Class Heroes who started their tenure in the States, interesting enough, with a song about a Taxi Driver listening to punk rock, but then came the cover of ‘we don’t have to take our clothes off’. Even Unklejam jumped on the wagon, fuelling our anger at ‘empty’ music. There are musics simmering around the pot of shit that is chart music, which have depth of sound, which are interesting and ‘forward thinking’ or even ‘retro’ and distinctive and we have the Mercury music prize to hail such artists (apparently). But there are also dull musics made with two layers on garageband and this, dear friends, is one of those records; a record that any monkey with garageband could make on their iMac; music that maybe a monkey did make on their iMac.

To add insult to injury, an addition of a Snow Patrol remix? Unbelievably a version that doesn’t warrant the remix title for its lack of distinction from the original; it’s still boring. And whilst Snow Patrol were brutishly thrown of their indie pedestal a long while ago, can we really believe that they have hailed them ‘The best band in the country for this and many years to come’? We know for a fact that Gary Lightbody has good taste in music (we’ve seen his ipod, and yes, there was alcohol involved) so why hail a band the next big thing when they’re so clearly not? Cynics may think the connection between Republic of Loose and Snow Patrol is a geographical one but is it deeper than that? It’s not hard to place this unfortunate single some place near the earth’s core of musical dirt. We wouldn’t clean our feet on this single and, to be frank, we’re surprised that Snow Patrol have. Strapped for cash? Possibly.