Guillemots - Red Review

Guillemots are something refreshingly different. They throw so many different genres into the melting pot it's hard to keep track of, they have wonderfully exotic names like Fyfe Dangerfield and MC Lord Magrão and onstage they've been known to make use of items such as typewriters. Beat that, The Enemy.

Their debut album Through The Windowpane was deservedly nominated for a Mercury Music Prize, but the suspicion remained that that particular album didn't quite replicate the band's manic energy onstage. That omission is more than made up for on Red: as Dangerfield sings on opening track Kriss Kross, "let's shake things up a bit tonight"....full text Do-gooding celebrities have never been my bag. Flicking through the daily rags to find a bosom of botoxed socialites slumming it with the needy frequently reintroduces me to a more coagulated form of my morning oats. The same can be said of that smug-pussed sect of the musical aristocracy who spoon-feed us shite about needing to make a difference to the world before skulking off to their countryside manors founded on sweatshop-produced merchandising and carbon-emitting live shows. (Bono, Sting, Jagger, McCartney: I'm looking at you.)...full text It's almost unbelievable that Guillemots exist at all in 2008. There's not a starlet among them, nor a genre du jour shaped peg to hang them on and, rather uncomfortably, they evoke the spirit of mid '80s sophisto-pop, peddling widescreen clever-clever music with singalong choruses for grown-ups. How on earth have this major label signed act endured with seemingly no marketable qualities? Well, that'll be the songs. Huge, symphonic dispatches with barrelling verses and choruses like sky-bound fireworks....full text