VIVA STEREO – The Surface Has Been Scratched EP (Much Better)
Posted: April 14th, 2005, by Alex McChesneyBeep… Beepbeepitybeep… Blame a squandered youth spent indoors cultivating a cathode-ray tan when I could have been out interacting with other kids and developing social skills and the like, but I’m a sucker for music that sounds like it could be from an 8-bit computer game. As a result, track one on this EP – “Jesus Son” – has my sympathies right away. Then it immediately goes and squanders them by turning into a lazy Primal Scream knockoff, as if Bobby Gillespie were replaced by a rhyming dictionary. “Severed Head” does a bit better, ditching the guitars in favour of the electro-funk thing, but again the vocals spoil it with sub-Gallagher “can’t be fucked singing properly” whining. “One Last Cigarette, One Last Call” is an instrumental that makes heavy use of synth-strings. Enough said there, I think. Final track “Junk” returns to the plundering of 90’s ecstasy casualties, but this time it’s the Happy Mondays who get the treatment, with similar results. Meh.
Alex McChesney
Alex was brought up by a family of stupid looking monkeys after being lost in the deep jungles of Paisley. Teaching him all their secret conga skills (as well as how to throw barrels at plumbers), Alex was able to leave for the bright lights of Glasgow where adventure struck him and he needed all his conga skills to save the world and earn the hand of a lovely Texan princess. He now keeps a low profile alphabeticising his record collection and making sock monkeys in the likenesses of his long lost family.
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