This is as low as it can get. We've drivelled on about the abysmal state of British music for long enough. It's time to start feeling optimistic again: Hepburn's debut album has arrived, and we've reached the absolute bottom of the pile.
Slagging off this risible CD is, admittedly, as hard as squashing a pea with a tank, but there's no point in being unpredictable or ironic here: Hepburn is music made by morons, marketed by evil morons and designed to be bought by people they hope are morons.
For if Hepburn weren't invented by a bunch of wank-frazzled, flipchart-toting middle-aged male monkeys, then they certainly present themselves as if they were. The concept - 'girl power' with guitars, 'indie' Corrs, multiple Imbruglias - is brilliant, of course. So brilliant, in fact, that every label except Chemikal Underground is currently grooming a gang of 'sassy' late-teens aimed at precisely the same demographic. God help us.
Look at it this way: stage school dropped aitches, FM ultra-lite 'homages' to the magic of Garbage, The Cardigans and Sheryl Crow, a riff not dissimilar to 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' prostituted across new single 'Bugs', the odd mention of fags to prove how rebellious Hepburn are. The most morally and aesthetically repugnant album ever, more or less.
Or alternatively, the press release: "It's bursting with hooks, top choons and a huge slab of foxy fierceness." Really, it's OK. From here, the only way is up.
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