
Review: Glasvegas – Later… When the TV Turns to Static
Published on September 5th, 2013 | Jonny Abrams
Apparently, Glasvegas recorded their third album Later… When the TV Turns to Static on the very same mixing desk on which Pavarotti did “Nessun Dorma”. That’s quite a sales pitch for the owner of said desk: Pavarotti…and Glasvegas.
Who’s next in the sequence is anyone’s guess, but we’re here to review rather than speculate frivolously. And that, good people, is conceivably the only review of Later… When the TV Turns to Static you’ll find that contains the word ‘frivolously’.
Barrel of laughs it ain’t, but then the semi-pervasive doominess works in its favour. The opening title track is Glasvegas ‘drunken anthem’ washing tonality by numbers, playing host to much arbitrary rhyming of words with the suffix ‘-atic’.
However, salvation is hinted at by a big roaring lead guitar and a pleasingly twinkly outro, laterally conceived touches that may not go on to characterise Later… When the TV Turns to Static but sure as heck go some towards alleviating the initial tedium.
“Youngblood” wields a foreboding air that’s rather becoming of Glasvegas, while the ensuing “All I Want is My Baby” and “Secret Truth” forge a welcome mix of sinisterly-minded Pulp and The Twilight Sad.
Stand-out status is claimed by the darkly majestic melodrama of “I’d Rather be Dead (Than Be With You)”, the spoken word section of which is hard not – in an admittedly idle way – to equate with the “choose life” speech from Trainspotting. No harm done there, mind.
Alas the mood is not sustained. “If” reverts to the ‘drunken anthem’ identikit nothingness, more ‘TV sync’ than ‘TV static’, while “Finished Sympathy” is little more than a clever title, less interesting than the hidden track of creepy sci-fi noises that follows it.
Not without its strong moments, then, but Later… When the TV Turns to Static is ultimately blighted by too much of what Glasvegas needed to get away from in the first place.
Later… When the TV Turns to Static is out now on BMG Rights Management.
You can buy Later… When the TV Turns to Static on iTunes and on Amazon.
Rocksucker says: Two and a Half Quails out of Five!
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