April 13, 2006

The Zutons: Tired Of Hanging Around

Second effort from the Scouse oddities who everybody just can’t help lovin’Second effort from the Scouse oddities who everybody just can’t help lovin’

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Photo Gallery: The Zutons

7 / 10 Why does everyone like The Zutons? Bands who dress up as zombies and summon up strange reference points like Dr John, Devo and Area Code 615 should not, after all, be popular. At all. Maybe the not knowing has got David McCabe feeling antsy– ‘Tired Of Hanging Around’ is one seriously pissed-off, paranoid, twitchy record. Anyone who has heard the single ‘Why Won’t You Give Me Your Love?’ will know what to expect as it’s a great pop song, stuffed with threat. You can more or less lump everything here into two camps – ‘feeling threatened’ and ‘being threatening’. The former camp houses the melodically gorgeous, explicitly paranoid ‘Someone Watching Over Me’, as flushed and swollen with musical warmth as it is with lyrical malevolence and neuroses; ‘Tired Of Hanging Around’, all Teardrop Explodes gallop and FM rock chorus; the pained, anguished hangover blues of ‘It’s The Little Things We Do’; and the thoroughly despondent ‘How Does It Feel?’. The other half, the ‘being threatening’ ones (you’ll be tested on this later) include ‘Oh Stacey’, a straight-ahead slice of boogying stomp that appears to be about a girl who has driven her father to suicide, and the album’s stand-out, ‘You’ve Got A Friend In Me’, a fantastically sassy stalker/stalkee duet from his and her perspectives.

The big question that one ends up asking is: Who Or What Pissed Off The Zutons So Much? Because we should all shake them by the hand, immediately.

Pete Cashmore

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