This is as low as it can get. We’ve drivelled on about the abysmal state of British music for long enough. It’s time to start feeling optimistic again: [a]Hepburn[/a]’s debut album has arrived, and we’ve reached the absolute bottom of the pile.
Slagging off this risible CD is, admittedly, as hard as squashing a pea with a tank, but there’s no point in being unpredictable or ironic here: [a]Hepburn[/a] is music made by morons, marketed by evil morons and designed to be bought by people they hope are morons.
For if [a]Hepburn[/a] weren’t invented by a bunch of wank-frazzled, flipchart-toting middle-aged male monkeys, then they certainly present themselves as if they were. The concept – ‘girl power’ with guitars, ‘indie’ Corrs, multiple Imbruglias – is brilliant, of course. So brilliant, in fact, that every label except Chemikal Underground is currently grooming a gang of ‘sassy’ late-teens aimed at precisely the same demographic. God help us.
Look at it this way: stage school dropped aitches, FM ultra-lite ‘homages’ to the magic of Garbage, The Cardigans and Sheryl Crow, a riff not dissimilar to ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ prostituted across new single ‘Bugs’, the odd mention of fags to prove how rebellious [a]Hepburn[/a] are. The most morally and aesthetically repugnant album ever, more or less.
Or alternatively, the press release: “It’s bursting with hooks, top choons and a huge slab of foxy fierceness.” Really, it’s OK. From here, the only way is up.