Press - Reviews: Stereophonics @ WelshBands
NME - STEREOPHONICS - LOCAL BOY IN THE PHOTOGRAPH (V2)
NME - Stereophonics - I Wouldn't Believe Your Radio (V2)
NME - Stereophonics - Mr Writer (V2)
NME - STEREOPHONICS - LOCAL BOY IN THE PHOTOGRAPH (V2)
Oh how 60Ft Dolls must fancy a trip to the sonic paradise currently inhabited by the Stereos, where praise is served by enraptured journos every hour.
While the Dolls have spent the last year recording their album in America in their quest for the very stuff of rock folklore, their spite'n'fury thunder has been well and truly hijacked, plugged into a wall of Marshall amps and made into something that record company 'execs' like to call `potentially global'.
Indeed, despite the occasional lapse into some of the most dire lyricism since Ride `Local Boy...' - rereleased from last February - provides us with everything that's promoted the band to preeminence.
Kelly roars like a wounded bison about the agonies of small-town existence while the tune, roughly-wired as it is, is enough to get even the Manics jumpy. Expect to hear it accompanying the 'Goal Of The Month' rundown on Match Of The Day within the fortnight.
NME - Stereophonics - I Wouldn't Believe Your Radio (V2)
Welsh, y'know. "Woke about four this morning with Ringo Starr and George Harrison singing this tune in my dream," writes Kelly Jones, touchingly, on the press release. Sadly, the subtle arts of his bandmates have rendered `I Wouldn't Believe Your Radio' into a cack-handed strumalong in the infinitely less appealing image of The Wonder Stuff. Jones always seems a bit of a tragic figure, awkward about his sensitivity, desperately striving to be more faddish than suits him. Still, pays the bills.
Masochists are directed to the strangely adequate version of Neil Young's `The Old Laughing Lady' on the B-side.
NME - Stereophonics - Mr Writer (V2)
"You build them up/You knock them down/You never smile/You always frown/And were you even at the same gig anyway?" OK, we're improvising here, but the gist of Stereophonics' new single is that Kelly Jones doesn't like journalists very much. "Mr Writer" he spits, the People's Frontman addressing ordinary everyday issues of media coverage, "why don't you tell it like it is? ...Are you so lonely?/You don't even know me/But you'd like to stone me". Well, without wanting to look as if we've been, like, stung by his incisive criticism land God knows, when man and rhyming dictionary combine with such ruthless efficiency, it's hard to remain sanguine) if we really told it like it is and tried to approximate the sheer dreariness of this song, health and safety would dictate this review carried a warning about operating heavy machinery. And to be honest, life's too short and too interesting. This is our truth. Please don't bother us with yours. And if you must, Stereo-so¬called-Phonics, we have got a letters page - the price of a stamp compares quite favourably with recording costs.