The Rain

The Rain fall mainly into the plain. More precisely, into the bin marked ‘modern rock’ where all the runts of the musical litter go – those without enough sonic life-force to take those first teetering steps towards a proper genre. OK, The Rain sound a bit like Placebo, but without the androgyny, swish production, buzzsaw vocals or, well, anything that differentiates them from a zillion other bands. They should have been mown down the moment they tried to jump the fence of garage-band land, and probably would have been had Colin Murray not tagged their single ‘Big Lie’ as one of his Top 10 of ’06. The only real entertainment value here lies in listening to Lorenz Theuer’s Germanic vowels contort themselves into faux-Americanisms, so that he ends up sounding like Sacha Baron Cohen’s Bruno. And that’s nicht-nicht fabulous, guys.

Gavin Haynes

3 out of 10