Matthew Ritchie
On first listen to the premier album by The Postelles, I know exactly what they’re doing the entire time. All good rock n’ roll has a bit of mystery to it. The lack of mystery on their self-titled album isn’t what makes it bad though. It’s everything else about this record as well.
Have you ever heard of the band The Kooks? They’re a pretty excellent English rock n’ roll band. On their first album Inside In/Inside Out, they blended pop songs about love and jangly Police-inspired guitar licks with weird british reggae drawls to make an unforgettable album. Then they made their second album Konk. Konk may be the worst second album by a good band in the history of music.
The idea behind Konk is this: Take all the interesting and mysterious guitar techniques found on the first album (a little bit of a slide up the neck here, hitting the guitar while distorted there) and put it on every track on the next album. Gone are the fabulous pop songs and here to stay are a bunch of weird noise with no context to any of the lyrical or thematic content of the songs.
This being said, The Kooks did have an amazing first record, but their second one was what the British press usually referred to as “Shite”.
Now imagine if the reverse of Konk happened on a record. On The Postelles self-titled debut you have a bunch of well crafted sugary pop songs, but there is no flair. No studio tricks. No interesting sounds. Just cliche songs with names like “Boy’s Best Friend” and “Can’t Stand Still”.
You may remember the Arctic Monkey’s single “I Bet You Look Good on the Dance Floor”, the song that single handedly brought the idea of dancing to rock music back into the British music scene. Well, The Postelles think they’re cheeky by naming one of their songs “Sleep On The Dance Floor”. No, it’s not “Asleep On The Dance Floor”, it’s “Sleep On The Dance Floor”. Is this a demand by the band? Are they referring to gunk found under the lower eyelid? Either way, your album is putting me to sleep, Postelles.
I really want to like this band, I really do. They’re currently touring with two of the coolest rock bands from New York of the past ten years (The National and Interpol respectively), but these tunes sound even worse than Interpol’s second album, Narc, which just happens to be the second worst sophmore album by a band of all time next to The Kook’s Konk.
I know what you’re doing Postelles. You think you’re cheeky by naming your band something similar to all those 60’s do-wop bands with suffixes like “las” “ettes”. You’re a bunch of dudes which makes it even cheekier. You all look like adorable ragamuffins in your four day old beards and Gossip Girl attire.
But I know your secret. You’re just like any other band of New York hipsters. You want girls. You want to hook up with them after concerts. You want to be cool. But no, this makes you totally uncool.
You’re almost as bad as all those 80’s hair metal bands with bravado and a deep desire for groupies, but at least those guys had the courage to write songs about banging chicks by masquerading them with obvious metaphors like “Cherry Pie”.
Instead you use you’re handsome smiles and bedhead and I find it equally as fake.
Warrant is more enjoyable than this. At least they were more honest with what their music entailed.
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