The Vitamins are a female fronted band who may have played the Circus Tent at Glastonbury this year but they failed to impress me with this single. The band are inspired by 60s blues and punk which sounds like a pretty interesting combination when read but turns out to be a pretty dreary listen. This single crawls and pulls it’s way through every one of it’s 186 seconds. It is simply dull.
Their records label, The Red Flag Recording Co, state that the band were signed to them because there are not enough women in rock. Whilst this may well be true, that is no excuse to sign a band just because they boast a female singer. This sounds like James Blunt/Coldplay/Embrace all rolled into one with a female vocalist who sounds like a British version of Belinda Carlisle mixed with a little Stevie Nicks. The song is one paced and goes nowhere. The lyrics drone and lament about how there may be bad things today but will get better. Yawn. Yes, we have both seen and heard this song before, and it has been done so much better.
The video boasts Samantha Morton (Minority Report, In America, The Libertine) as the star and I can only assume this actress either knows the band or needed a little extra cash. However, whilst this is stated in the publicity material, I was unable to find a link to the video either on the band's site or on any of the links contained in their site.
This single is released on September 17th according to the promotional material but the band’s MySpace site suggests that the release date has been backdated by a week to September 24th. The band are to play a handful of gigs in London the same month.
Later Will Be Better can be heard on the bands MySpace site at
www.MySpace.com/thevitamins although it is strangely not yet on their own band site at
www.thevitamins.co.uk
It is always a shame when a promotional single only has one song on it as this doesn’t always give a reasonable overall view of the band the promotional company want to be reviewed. Certainly this song alone does not inspire me to hear any more music from The Vitamins.
