4 / 10
U2 REALLY ARE EVIL BASTARDS. NO LONGER content to foist their nauseating bombast on the public once every few years, they are now filling in the gaps between their own records by releasing pompous toss by other acts on their Mother label.
Ballroom come straight from the same school of songwriting that brought us the bilious musings of Suede and the noxious, self-pitying shite of Morrissey at his least inspired. 'Day After Day', while not without redeeming features, is an album drunk on doomed romanticism which lies prostrate on pop's busy highway waiting to be splattered. Singer Gary Prosser has a raspy voice not unlike Crispin Longpig and a knack of writing miserable epic tunes but is seemingly unaware that there are white keys on a piano as well as black ones.
Hence, while in the context of more varied material, the title track and the similarly sullen 'Household Names' might have sounded rather mighty, mounted as they are in 35 minutes of supine foppishnes with string sections they are denied the opportunity to shine.
Ballroom then, as in plenty of room for balls.
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