May 25, 2001

BBMak : Sooner Or Later

They write their own songs, you know...

1 / 10 You could call them the pop Bush, because, with over a million copies of this album already sold Stateside, yet incapable of getting arrested here for buggering the Queen's corgis, BBMak are now setting their cold crocodile eyes on home territory. We can only hope they have as little success as Gavin Rossdale.

Thanks to a spurious idea of credibility, they may well find it difficult in the (six)packed and chiselled boyband marketplace anyway. So sure this is pop, but they've tediously scorned the shrink-wrapped, smiley ridiculousness of Hear'Say and S Club 7 for playing instruments and writing their own songs.

A little knowledge being a dangerous thing, you'll wish a despotic Svengali was forcing them into jerky dance routines, 24-hour TV surveillance, crash diets and crass BPM covers. So instead of spangly, shallow exuberance we get menopausal flushes like international big hit 'Back Here', the Coke-advert sentimental 'Unpredictable', and an endless supply of bland twiddly guitar ballads and trite exhortations to a love greater than any mere mortal could stand.

Like a compilation of the bits of George Michael's career that now make him cringe, coupled with the joyless, jobsworthy AOR of Billy Joel, BBMak make Westlife seem charismatic. Pray it doesn't happen here.

Jim Alexander

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