Heading for a fall

(Morning Star, Friday 6 February 2009)

Album review:

Razorlight, Slipway Fires
(Vertigo)

RAZORLIGHT divide public opinion. If you liked the London foursome's last eponymous album, then there's plenty more sentimental pap in this, their third record, to woo you.

On piano-led opener and 2008 top five single Wire To Wire, singer Johnny Borrell pontificates: "How do you love in a house without feelings?" but he has no answers.

For those who nearly choked on the over-produced rhetoric that the band peddled on singles like America, there is more self-congratulatory material here. Tabloid Lover is every inch a Duran Duran for the noughties, apparently taking a pop at one of Borrell's celebrity exes, while North London Trash sees the band taking on the Boomtown Rats, singing about broken homes and other gritty realisms.

The band's debut promised an edgy indie rock band, but since then, it seems like Razorlight are doing everything within their power to stumble and fall.