Hurts - Exile The cover doubles up as a one-word review

Review: Hurts – Exile

Published on March 6th, 2013 | Jonny Abrams

Hurts to say this, but this band should be in Exile!

Chortle!

Calm down, it’s a joke. Well, only ‘sort of’, because the Manchester duo’s second album picks up where the first one left off by sucking pretty badly. Things begin promisingly enough with the nocturnal electro groove, throbbing distorted bass and flailing, Thom Yorke-y vocal, but the dung heap that ensues probably should be used as grounds for banishment.

“Sandman” comes closest to being half decent but is drained of all momentum the moment that frustratingly limp lead vocal kicks in, the one that might as well be Backstreet Boys. It’s a classic case of ‘okay backing track utterly ruined by singer’s voice’, alright.

Then it gets worse. “Blind” is utterly, utterly devoid of interest – commercialised dross, you might say – and “Only You” brings to mind Steps. Euch. “When the night is young but it makes you feel much older…” sings the singer – yes, we will keep calling him ‘the singer’ rather than google his name (which would only take us a few seconds) out of petty point-scoring, in fact let’s take the piss a bit more by inserting a link to Google – and we have to say this album makes us feel much older.

In a ‘wearying’ way, not a “is this what the kids are listening to??” way. Although that too, we suppose.

“The Road” makes a decent fist of it with stompy chorus punctuation and merciful deviation from ‘standard pop song progression’ for the first time since the first track, while “Cupid” is relatively okayish. The lyrical concerns still centre very much around lovelorn cliché (“I’ll never let you go” etc), and “Mercy” manages to catch the proverbial eye merely by dint of being a bit less tedious than some of the other songs but still a bit tedious. Not as tedious as the frankly Keane-like “The Crow”, which is exceedingly tedious.

The one with Elton John on it isn’t too bad, though. And that’s not out of deference to Elton John, as we only really like “Bennie and the Jets”. That is a damn good song, though.

**** off, “you can’t begin a sentence with a conjunction” – you can now, you utter ****wad. Look, this album sucked so much and sounded so much like The Killers *shudder* that it put us in a bad mood. Stick that quote on the ****ing cover.

Hurts? ****s, more like.

Rocksucker says: Hurts to say this, but Half a ****ing Quail out of Five!

half a quail

Exile is out now. For more information, go ask some people in the street or something.

Artists:

About the Author

Editor of Rocksucker and the website's founder, Jonny is passionate about the music he listens to, both good and bad, as well as interviewing his favourite musicians.


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