After two albums of post-Britpop mediocrity, Manchester trio I Am Kloot kick things up a notch (or think they do), and suffer from bipolarity and an ambition that outstrips their ability. The disc plays like a sex operation gone botched-- Adonis to Medusa in 10 minutes tops. Three songs into a promising start, the I Am Kloot of yesteryear rears its lyrically asinine head, which wouldn't be so bad if the Kloot didn't regard themselves as "Harold Pinter real deal to everyone else's overblown, Cecil B. de Mille mock-ups."
More problems arise when this band wants to be somebody's soundtrack-- all vampires and exotic places-- and from there the degeneration's traceable: The straightforward "No Direction" largely succeeds, "Over My Shoulder" straddles the good-to-ugly divide, and "An Ordinary Girl" is a full-blown suck-fest. Moody Doves-like undercurrents work in small doses but wilt when spooned out in large doses.
If you're looking for reference points, Cinerama's shtick isn't far off, except that was smart. You never caught David Gedge singing about the "bald raging flame of your heart" or recounting Gothic tales of "ordinary" girls in what he thinks are fifty-pence words. I Am Kloot singer John Bramwell's execution is gloomily expressive at best, melodramatic as a rule, and when the Wurlitzers materialize like dry ice at a Backstreet Boys concert, shit's more exasperating than convincing-- and tiresome, too.
While it's true that stories don't tell themselves, Kloot's stories might speak volumes if Bramwell sang less. Loungey "Avenue of Hope" could be an Angry Inch B-side, if this Hedwig were a wholly sincere woman with a deep voice and razor-thin vocal range instead of an affected man with with an overdeveloped sense of misanthropy and a razor-thin vocal range. "Hong Kong Lullaby" feels like a cheap shot at fluffy pillow-softness, offering respite from billowing swells of over-instrumentation but little else; "I Believe", a weirdly compelling Nick Drake anthem-cum-rescue mission, comes tacked on as a bedside prayer finale that also fails to salvage or move (to tears or otherwise) thanks to the tyranny of circumstance. For all their godlike aspiration, it's a shame that I Am Kloot basically don't do Genesis.
