06.
Red Light Company
Fine Fascination

Stadium rock from a band that’s nowhere near famous enough (yet) to actually fill a stadium. Not for the want of trying, though: Red Light Company clearly have a grand plan, and that plan is to sell more copies of their album than God did of his holy book. The band are really full of themselves (their interviews make them sound like U2 did 20 years ago). Somewhat irritatingly, they have the quality songs (loads of them!) to have the potential to be as big as they are in their own heads, and, more annoyingly still, actually probably deserve to be. Fine Fascination demonstrates that the (counter-intuitive) concept of heavily produced, clean sounding ‘grunge’ isn’t just the preserve of shitty bands like Nickleback. Red Light Company take the basic 90s quiet/loud rock template and give it their own spin. Big swelling verses and even bigger choruses, with an interesting (but not intrusive) electronic element, and a strong but very palatable vocalist: this is how to make a commercial rock album. There’s not really anything original to be found here, but there is enough of a sense of self about the record that possible comparisons (Editors etc) really don’t work, not least because Red Light Company are in another league. Ok, so the lyrics are banal to the point of barely existing (go figure, this is radio-rock). And, yes, if you want ‘art’ or innovation from your music, this is the wrong place to come. But, these are larger-than-life anthemic rock songs of a consistently excellent standard throughout, something that is particularly impressive given that this is their debut. They’re songs that are impossible to get out of your head, and which really should be filling huge spaces. Coming to an arena near you soon.