Britpop revival I hear you say? There’s certainly a whiff of it in the air at the moment. As far as some – most even – are concerned this would be a disaster of Ben Sherman shirt proportions, but London-via-Lewisham’s The Shakes are not to be put off by that. Me? I like to think I’m open-minded, objective and I do believe if something’s done right it’s worth doing. Unfortunately ‘I Want A Better Life’ gets nowhere near doing it right.
Like Kaiser Chiefs they take their inspiration from the Blur rather than Oasis end of the Britpop spectrum, going for a more melodic, politically aware approach as opposed to the balls out rock of The Enemy et al. Lyrically it is an attack (I hope) on capitalism and materialism, but while this is a laudable sentiment, even glaring irony can’t hide the painfulness of lyrics such as: “I want to be your man, ‘cos you look pretty cool and you’ve got a tan”. Dylan it certainly ain’t.
The one-dimensional lyrical approach is unfortunately matched by the music. It is your run of the mill four-piece indie rock: verse verse chorus verse verse chorus guitars drums. There is a bit of keyboard and a few bleeps thrown in there for good measure and the obligatory Beatles-nod with the ‘Eleanor Rigby’ inspired chorus, but despite a slightly more interesting b-side (‘I Remember’) there is sadly very little else inspired about it.
The Shakes believe that it is harder to write a great pop song than it is to make pretentious art rock. Listening to these three minutes seems to confirm that because they certainly haven’t written a great pop song.
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First published on www.rockfeedback.com. See it here.
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