Viva Stereo Roar Lion Roar

I'm not sure if Viva Stereo understand that New Order and the Happy Mondays and such bands existed in Manchester in the late 80s and early 90s, but they did. This Glaswegian band appears either not to have noticed, or they're doing a really, really piss poor modern day imitation. Unfortunately for them, however, the record they've produced is really lacking in creativity and is just depressingly bad.

This may seem a little harsh. Musically, in places, Roar Lion Roar carries a nice rhythm with good hooks and dreamy, sparse soundscapes. With the right producer behind it, a more creative pair of hands, this could have borne an admirable similarity to, say, Her Space Holiday. Or even something along the line of the Klaxons. But, sadly, it falls way short of these benchmarks.

Alongside its simplistic "let's play a bit of electronic music and shove some guitars over it" approach, Roar Lion Roar features some of the most laughable lyrics I've ever heard. I just don't dig singing about how fat you are, how drunk you got, or how many drugs you took. Artists like the Streets have done this very, very well and set the bar. What on earth Viva Stereo think they're adding to anyone's record collection, other than a distinct lack of taste, is something only they can answer. Apparently, in the band's own words, it is a "mixtape (or cd!) to the Saturday night excess, through Sunday's soul searching and into Monday's drudgery of the 9-5 job". But all the album does is re-tell these "antics". What they don't understand is most people want to escape from that, not hear how depressing it is. On Glass they note "stayed out all last night, where's this going to end" and on Night Owl "still drunk when I woke up, because one beer is never enough, and now it's early I've got to go to work, I've got the shakes and my head hurts, I stayed up late and drank all night again, me and the wife got into a fight again". I mean ….just…..WHAT?! Also calling a song This Is Not An Exit is really not an astute cultural reference any more. It's been done to death.

Viva Stereo get two stars because I occasionally liked listening to their bad New Order impressions when there weren't any vocals, and because track 6, Last Living Hope, with a guest vocalist, is actually very nice. On this release there are contributions from Malcolm Middleton of Arab Strap and Chris Deveney from My Latest Novel, plus the band's first album featured contributions from members of the Reindeer Section. I fear these are the highlights.