If you spent the previous decade keeping up with a wimpier stripe of UK rock music, 2010 is shaping up to be a hell of a year-- by May, we'll have already seen new albums from Badly Drawn Boy, Tom McRae, Athlete, and Keane. So I suppose it's as appropriate a time as any for early 2000s hype and Take That ghostwriters Turin Brakes to reintroduce themselves.
The self-released Outbursts mostly operates on a scale reminiscent of their humble beginnings-- frantically strummed acoustics, dewy lead guitar, close harmonies, and an occasional spit shine of synthesizer. Weirdly though it's actually as unsettling as the new Liars album. Not sonically-- it's nobody's idea of edgy; yet thanks to Olly Knight's lyrics, the listener is perpetually wondering whether he can make it through the next 10 seconds without saying something stupid.
The list of Knights' clunkers is long and distinguished and he honors tradition here, never failing to pockmark perfectly decent folk-rock with anti-quotables that pop up with even greater frequency than in the past-- the longing slide guitar and sparkling major-7th chords of "Paper Heart" give way to Knights testing the limits of to what "paper" can be applied as an adjective (worlds, girls, boys, toys) and dropping knowledge like "I live by the sea/ Not the one you're thinking / The sea inside of me." "Rocket Song" goes for the endlessly skyward grandiosity of Jeff Buckley's "Hallelujah" and comes up with "You're a bruise upon the brain/ I lay my cards down on the grain/ Slowly bursting into flame/ Then you leave me smoking in the rain." "The Invitation" creeps on the kind of kenning, baroque chord progression used in Radiohead's piano ballads, but stumbles over pick-up lines lke "I hail from an old-fashioned dream/ I'm outside your window making a scene." At one point he says he's the "ruler of this Internet." I have no idea what that means. Maybe I should consult Paul Wall.
Opening salvo "Sea Change" warns of a non-specific danger that has "six billion backs against the wall" and its final-countdown lyric is actually somewhat cleverly constructed. But then they flesh out the mix with incompatible disco strings and bongos that go for that "funky mixed meter" vibe and just end up sounding hilariously off-beat. Nothing on Outbursts turns out to overblown sonically, but "Sea Change" does signal a straining quality that runs throughout the album. Past highlights like "Underdog" and "Future Boy" hinted at a sense of humor and scrappy charm; yet no matter how stripped down or underwritten they sound these days, Turin Brakes still always come off like they're actually really trying, which is the saddest part about it.
