The Ronelles sound like a bit like bluesy Oasis. This album kicks off with
Magic Blues and has a nice bit of harp on it and I'm getting quite into it. It's no
Black Eyed Snakes but it's not bad. The vocals of the first track ruin the feel of the song however. I'm not going to insult the singer by saying he's doing it intentionally but he comes off a lot like he's trying to sound like Liam Gallagher. It's Buckfast singing; just a Mancy whine.
Thankfully by the second track this seems to have passed. The blues influences remain but aren't the focus of the music either and it's an improvement. It's perhaps closer to The Libertines and a few of the tracks,
Bolt The Doors especially, get quite catchy. The lyrics aren't too shabby either. The jangly guitars suit the style they're going for and the drumming goes along with it to give it a frantic feel at times.
By the time
Don't Leave Me Hanging comes round that blues sound, and harp, have returned along with a bit of piano, but this time it works a lot better. The vocals switch between the two sounds the band are going for and although there are still Gallagher-esque parts to his voice when he goes all blues it doesn't sound as pronounced as it did on the first track.
(Well) I Love You may be the best example of their attempts at mixing Indie, Britpop and Blues.
There is absolutely nothing about this band that screams out at you at being amazing nor is there anything that's too offensive. It's fairly run of the mill ordinary stuff. If you go to the type of clubs that plays a lot of Stone Roses, Libertines or The Strokes then, no doubt, this is the kinda stuff you hear all the time. A few tracks, with a bit of Radio 1 airplay, could be an "anthem" to a generation of 1st year students. A lot of it sounds like filler on one of those "Shine" compilations that were so big in the 90s.
At the halfway point in the album I'm just bored. I listen on in hope of one of the remaining half a dozen tracks jumping out at me and giving me something to really get my teeth into and I'm not holding my breath. As I said though none of the songs are 'bad'; well maybe
Magic Blues, but it's all merging into the same level of average. If one of the singles from this album got some good airplay as a single you'd probably quite like it. The album just never rises above mediocrity.
Staggered Eyes almost gets me excited but then it slips back into the quagmire this album has become.
I do however get the impression that this stuff could be good live. Any frontman with a bit of a swagger about him could make these songs reach a higher level and draw a crowd into it. If the singer can do this live he really isn't showing it on record. I've wasted about half an hour listening to the end of this album when I could have left it after three songs.
Thank fuck I didn't though; the penultimate track,
She Said No, finally raises it's head above every other song. The chorus will be stuck in my head for a few days at least and it's about time too. The vocals, which I had earlier dismissed as plain, have a resonance in this track that was never achieved earlier. If this one comes out as a single, buy it. If it doesn't then don't bother with the album as the rest of it is too turgid to excuse liking this one song. Maybe if they had trimmed the album by a few tracks I would've enjoyed it more. Decent stuff: nothing special.
Motel is out now on Neon Tetra Records.
http://www.myspace.com/theronelles
