Sorry there’s a queue for the toilet but Rob McCulloch is in there suffering from a hangover, a very nasty Britpop hangover.
Thoughts Alone is a ten track record spanning a variety of sounds and styles, those which were to be found on those Shine compilations that flooded shelves back in the heyday of lager and Kewl Britannia. It may all be woefully unoriginal but McCulloch has a fine voice, somewhere in between Richard Ashcroft and Robbie Williams, and the backing band play forcefully enough to render it a cut above your average solo act.
There’s a mixture of rugged electric Kinksian rock—
Let it Go and
Be Free—and more adventurous material such as the shoe gazing drone of
Questions in Disguise. The ballads are the stronger cuts on
Thoughts Alone, with the bouncy pastoral
Beauty Inside particularly shining through.
Thoughts Alone can be purchased via
www.robmcculloch.com, but they really should do something about the rather home-made looking CD sleeve.
