Mark Morriss - I’m Sick

(Muso's Guide, February 25, 2009)

Single review

Remember when Britannia ruled and everyone wanted to be photographed in 10 Downing Street?

When the Prime Minister had a history of being in bands and there was a reason to be cheerful in our green and pleasant land?
Mark Morriss does.

With all the fervent desire of a smack addict, Morriss dearly clings to the Britpop scene of which his former band The Bluetones were shining lights, a musical landscape at the fag-end of the 1990s so innocuous in its presence that it gave us little more than lacklustre legend and rock apocrypha concerning Blur and Oasis.

More than 10 years on, Morriss is still at it with more musical offerings. Last year’s Memory Muscle album masterminded with old hand David Arnold yielded much in the way of nostalgia - any former Britpopper worth their salt will still be moved to near-tears when the Hounslow boy’s plaintive indie-bleat peals out of the speakers - but little in the way of musical clarity.

‘I’m Sick’ does have more than a whiff of The ‘Tones about it, but the indie strumming is soon eclipsed by a seemingly-incongruous mariachi trumpet.

It’s unclear as to what form the titular sickness is taking, but with the line, “I’m sick and I want to get well again… I’m adrift, I’m my own worst enemy” it would be naive not to question if the sickness here is an incredible hankering for past… ahem… ‘glories’.

This, sadly, is a very slight return.