Return To Splendor

It's the sound of pop eating itself and then spitting out the bones, the last stand of pan-cultural postmodernity. At any rate, that's what the people responsible for The King's second album would love you to believe - and in fairness, the concept of a Belfast postman singing dead people's songs in an unconvincing Elvis twang can't be easy to sell without a little elaboration.

Alas, no amount of tired target-marketing or knowingly kitsch affectations can evade the fact that 'Return To Splendor' is the unidentified clay-like substance in the bowels of rock'n'roll. As graceless as he is pointless, The King, aka Jim Brown, spreads his muted cod-Memphis drawl over ham-handed interpretations of 'Sympathy For The Devil', 'Son Of A Preacher Man' and an especially awful 'Pretty Vacant'. It's not sacrilegious, nor even incisive, it's just numbingly boring. If you want to hear the Graceland lore pissed on in style, buy the Alec Empire vs Elvis Presley LP and scour your inner ear. If you want to hear bad pub-rock covers, go to the pub.

Apparently the idea for 'Return...' came when Jim was wondering what sort of records Elvis would be making were he still alive. Truly, one shudders to think - yet the moral is, 'tis better to be a bloated pop monstrosity than a piddling inconsequence like this.