Talk about asking for trouble. With their cheerily self-deprecating album title, cheeky Walthamstow chappies [a]Zuno Men[/a] put ideas into your head before you’ve even heard the first track. If they don’t have much faith in their music, after all, why on earth should we?
Worse than that, the self-pitying underdog humour in said title betrays the stench of rock-solid ’80s indie mentality, that knowingly clever-clever twist on the ordinary that, somehow, belies overwhelming desperation.
And guess what? That pretty much sums up the album’s content as well. There’s nothing specifically wrong here [I]as such[/I], except it’s at least ten years late in arriving. The Zuno Men (don’t even get me started on that name) are clearly so well-meaning that their limply witty lyrics and playschool [a]Wedding Present[/a] approach merely seems irritating at first. Indeed, the band’s jaunty determination to sound as if they’re having fun could well be endearing in small chunks (perhaps ‘Everybody Was Right’ or ‘Stay In With Me’), but the joke soon wears thin when spread over 15 entirely interchangeable tracks.
If you stick this to the end and only come out hating [a]Zuno Men[/a], they’ll have got off lightly.