Photo: Press
Most epic poets plunge “in media res” … That is the usual method, but not mine. My intention was to think of a cheeky Sherlock Holmes-related pun to really get this album review rolling. But, dear reader, after about five minutes of serious introspection it occurred to me that I’d probably spent way more time than The Sherlocks had trying to think of an original way I could introduce a tiny ray of sunshine into your humdrum lives – so in the end I didn’t bother.
Sometimes you feel like the Yorkshire band could be taking this album somewhere interesting, sometimes they take an instrumental break from all the Radio 1 platitudes and step cautiously on a distortion pedal. But then they start singing again, and the lyrics are the sort of motivational, relationship bunkum that should never be heard outside a pop song from a children’s B-movie. I can’t know for sure what the Sheffield nightlife is like these days, but The Sherlocks make it sound like an early Arctic Monkeys record that’s been scrubbed with far too much disinfectant.
In fact, lines like “Live For The Moment” seem pretty ironic given that this album doesn’t do much more than evoke a few noughties bands that we all should have forgotten about 10 years ago. Which might have been fine had The Sherlocks brought something new to the mix, and yet all they’ve done is unearth the predictable song structures and empty choruses that we already heard far too many times the last time around. ‘Indie-pop’, ‘indie-rock’, there are enough original bands out there to let us know that there’s still some life yet in these old portmanteaus, there’s just nothing innovative here to persuade you that one of these bands could be The Sherlocks.
