October 25, 2000

So Much For The Ten Year Plan - A Retrospective 1990-2000

There's still life in the Therapy? camp yet.

So much indeed. Therapy?, bless them and their unchanging Rock Soc fanbase, have long since found a commercial plateau, playing the same venues to the same people year after year. Furthermore, it's this bilateral relationship that assures their place in their affections. No alarms and no surprises with Andy Cairns' crew; just a crowdsurfer's boot in one's cranium and several litres of sweat clogging the pores. Inevitably,
you had to be there.

The fact Therapy? don't fit
into the stifling one-upsmanship
of rock's climate is the beautiful timing of this collection. None
of the current crop fuse this kind
of metalcore spite and pop sensibility, meaning the bulk of
'So Much...' shits Korn before breakfast, and adds tunes to boot. Earlier vitriolic splatters like
'Meat Abstract' and 'Potato Junkie' are fairly indebted to Big Black
and the Touch & Go aesthetic,
but it's their classic buzz-pop anthems - 'Teethgrinder', 'Nowhere', you know them like faded scars - invite the sort of nostalgia that comes with a free neck brace.

New track 'Bad Karma Follows You Around', an idiot savant
stomp of bullying intent, indicates there's still life in the Therapy? camp yet.

Noel Gardner