Send "The Courteeners " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Bbc |
 Forget preconceptions of boorish Manc laddishness – Morrissey’s championing of this fast-rising band is beginning to make sense. Two years on from their top five debut St. Jude, Liam Fray and his Middleton homeboys present an album to seal their role as the Stereoasisphonics-lookalikes that it’s okay to like. These are strong, conventional songs full of clever flicks and feints, deliciously produced by Ed (Suede, Pulp, White Lies) Buller. That Fray’s savvy, gritty-funny lyrics will be compared to Alex Turner’s just emphasises that arch couplets are so rare in pop today that we only have one reference point outside Moz himself. Most tracks bounce at a comfortable mid-pace, ensuring maximum sing-along factor, and perhaps Falcon flags before its end. Yet Buller ensures that even the most throwaway boast cunning builds and kinks, and Fray’s narratives compel you to hear the rest of the story. By now you’ll know radio favourite You Overdid It Doll, its mildly cautionary tale of “a space cadet dressed in fibre glass” driven by a catchy rhythmic motif that’s curiously reminiscent of Rod Stewart’s critically unassailable classic D’ya Think I’m Sexy? If that wasn’t enough for white-trash-disco fans, Blondie’s Heart of Glass is later name-checked by the boys. ...full text |
| Nme |
| Are you Blur or Oasis? A semi-metaphorical question that bizarrely seems almost as relevant in divvying up Britain’s indie fans today as it did sat around the radio as Mark Goodier announced the chart battle result in 1995. ‘Art pop’ versus ‘real rock’n’roll’, or shandy-drinking poofs versus knuckle-dragging lager-monkeys? It’s an age-old tribal divide. It all feels very silly if you’re feeling rational (ie, boring). But it remains a jibing rhetoric that motivates roughly 65 per cent of letters that land in NME’s mailbag and one that, for our sins, we all secretly like to invest in one way or another when crucifying/pedestalling some poor newbie act....full text |
| Yahoo |
| There's absolutely nothing wrong with ambition and let no one say differently. Without ambition, there's nothing to aspire to, no goals to achieve and no moving on. This is something The Courteeners know more than most and with this, their second album, the band does much to, ahem, spread its wings and take flight from the meat'n'boiled veg lad rock that characterised their debut album, 'St Jude'. Indeed, singer and focal point Liam Fray has even replaced the cocksure gobsh**e that came swaggering out of Middleton with a persona rich in introspection, consideration and - whisper it - maturity and it's one that suits him well. For all the perceptions of Fray as some kind of over-confident would-be desperate rock messiah only too keen to step into Liam Gallagher's desert boots, the reality is that of an articulate performer not prepared to suffer fools gladly, while harbouring the very public ambition of making The Courteeners the biggest band in the world. "I've been away, I've been working," intones Liam on the opening of, er, 'The Opener'. "But now I'm back and I need to know if you're still there / And I need to know if you care." Fighting talk? Braggadocio? Not a bit of it. Here's Fray writing an open love letter to his hometown of Manchester and the city looms large throughout the album. This is Liam the homeboy, the misunderstood sensitive rock star who's got more to offer than simple sex, drugs and rock'n'roll. Just witness the modestly titled 'Take Over The World' as Fray rather wincingly declares: "I've never written a cliché before / I'll probably never do so / She was beautiful though"....full text |
The Courteeners lyrics
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