(AU magazine May 2008)
(BEGGARS BANQUET)
In music history, it’s not that long since pop was a big, dumb animal. Sure, there was a streetwise cunning about the Sex Pistols, and no one had more angsty wisdom than Kurt Cobain, but actual booklearning? Not since the early days of Radiohead has anyone boasted of their academic credentials as loudly as iLIKETRAiNS. And with good reason. This film version of the album ‘Elegies To Lessons Learnt’ is packed full of visually arresting imagery – an animated figure depicting everyone from a plague-era vicar to a 20th century yachtsman, an MP who faked his own death to the Puritan who served as a minister in Salem during the witch trials. Yes, yes, it’s interesting, but preaching to boot. The problem is that the music is astonishing – sweeping and somber, with a soul which reaches deeper than anyone else around at the moment – but the patronised listener is not a happy one.
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