You can always count on rock ‘n’ roll for a bit of bad timing: Radiohead changed it’s lyrics to The Bends’ penultimate track “Sulk” following Kurt Cobain’s shotgun-related suicide; The Smashing Pumpkins’ third single “Disarm” from their second album Siamese Dream was banned by the BBC after it’s lyrical content clashed with morbid news stories of the time; and The Strokes saw sense to omit the mocking “New York City Cops” from the US release of their Is This It? debut album in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. However, it goes without saying that the release of Hard-Fi’s third album Killer Sounds is flagged by none of the above records’ hype or anticipation, therefore the closing title track with it’s tale of young people taking to the streets and rioting hasn’t whipped up a media frenzy and been rushed to be replaced following the recent urban unrest that’s plagued some of England’s major cities.
It’s almost a shame for the band that such an example of prophetic poetry and life imitating art didn’t hit the six o’clock news, as a bit of bad press would have done the album a bit of good. It’s been a very muted arrival all in all and, apart from it’s slightly unsettling painted skull artwork, Killer Sounds isn’t adorned with the same inspired, but strangely controversial, No Cover Art concept that fronted their previous effort Once Upon A Time In The West. But whether it’d made the headlines like it’s predecessor or not, Killer Sounds has remained what it is: a compulsively enjoyable slice of decadent and overly ambitious pomp.
I must admit I’m a fan of some of rock’s recent much hyped flops: Second Coming, Be Here Now, X&Y, Euphoric Heartbreak. I just love a band that pushes it’s music too far in the hope of being bigger and better only to end up veering off into absurdity. In context the above albums received harsh backlashes after an initially successful release and were only considered critical disasters after the dust had settled, but they remain enduring bloated treasure troves of musical guilty pleasures.
Even though Hard-Fi have attempted to classify themselves as a politically charged band with their own personal involvement in racial equality campaigns and musical themes cantering on the mediocrity of lower middle class idleness, they’re politicizing remains far too dumb to be taken seriously by the masses and so the band are at best enjoyed for their musical merits rather than their part-time protesting. A good thing too, as Killer Sounds is by far their dumbest record to date.
Teetering somewhere between mid-80s Michael Jackson records like "Billy Jean" and "Thriller", the Manchester Hacienda club scene and 90s dance acts such as Prodigy and The Chemical Brothers, the organic rock drum beats that were the heart of Hard-Fi’s previous albums has taken a back seat to some of Killer Sounds’ more explicit electronic rhythms. That’s not to say they’ve followed the recent indie band trend of simply sticking a few synth parts onto their records here and there to keep the kids happy, quite the contrary, in fact they’ve developed their already well established rock-you-can-dance-to format into a more intense and euphoric experience without opening themselves up to accusations of compromising their rock integrity… after all, they never really had that to begin with.
It’s no secret that frontman Richard Archer can’t sing, that’s what we love him for, but for once even his atonal wailings seem fractured and under pressure, especially on opener “Good For Nothing”. It’s the one part of the album that is glaringly inconsistent and perhaps could have done with re-recording. Archer has never sounded so underconfident and tired. Fortunately for us though his vocals never veer off into the mumbling nadir of Julian Casablancas’ vocals on The Strokes’ third album First Impressions Of Earth which single-handedly destroyed the hard work put in by the rest of the band, but they do hit a few cringe-worthy speed bumps.
With this new electro confidence the DIY ethos that permeated their previous albums has gone. This doesn’t sound like the same band that built their own studio by hand or recorded tracks in the back seat of a car. Before they were making dance records as if before the dawn of synthesisers, sampling and looping. Now their music is washed with an antiseptic electronic bleach that has eroded their characteristically modest musicianship and drowned much of the instrumentation’s personality.
But even though there’s an intoxicating busyness to the album it doesn’t spoil the very skilled songwriting that’s been made to endure, and so the new production dynamics have not been allowed to become too much of a barrier between the listener and the great tunes.
Whilst Killer Sounds is by no means a musical failure it does represent a band experimenting with a sound that they’ve been flirting with ever since their debut, Stars Of CCTV, with mixed results. The new glossy production values, which will be well suited to providing the soundtrack to clips of football highlights or montages of sun drenched music festivals with young people waving their arms in the air, is a welcome change but I really hope that Hard-Fi return next time with a more bare bones release that shows them at their best. Warts and all.
3/5
