Best say never

(Morning Star, Saturday 09 July 2005)

ALBUM: Backstreet Boys - Never Gone
(Jive)

AND so it is, with an album title that sounds more like a threat than a promise, that the good work of the last almost five years has instantaneously been undone.

Backstreet's back and little more than a limp-wristed cash-in for the world's formerly biggest boy band it is too.

Hit singles here are thin on the ground, a shame indeed after such pan-global chart toppers as I Want It That Way.

Age has made the boys into apparently lumpen men - and men who are intent on weighing down the chart with more mid-tempo dirges like first single Incomplete.

Never Gone? With records like this, never say never.