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album reviews

William



Self In Fiction 5 ( 2008 )
Five Minute Wonder / Whoreditch / DS1 / Thomowski / South of the Border / Errr...Lee / Aperture / Playground / Porco Dio vs Schweinehund / zHERO

'Five Minute Wonder' opens this album of landfill-indie fare and is anything but a wonder. William, in case you don't know, are a cross between half-a-dozen indie bands without yet managing to add anything at all distinctive to the genre. Well, thankfully they don't sound exactly like Arctic Monkeys or Kooks or Kasabian, so there's certainly hope for them yet. There seems to actually be quite a few bands harking back to C86 and using that as a base-template then modernising it. Modernising or ruining? Well, the jury is out on that one yet as 'Whoreditch' spins by my ears I can tell William are vaguely in a similar place to Johnny Foreigner - although William have yet to get wild enough with themselves. You know, William? Can I call you William? Great, anyway, what was I saying? Ah, yes! Move your C86 jangle of a guitar upfront, turn down the rhythm section slightly, especially the bass even though you have a good bass player, plain as day. Also, do something to the way the vocals have been recorded. A little natural echo perhaps? William are fine enough to provide entertaining minutes of diversion, but that's about it at the moment.

Highlights include 'Thomowski', tellingly one of the briefer, more energetic songs. The guitars here harken back to Prolapse and the vocals are entertainingly incomprehensible. 'Aperture' opens with speedy guitar parts before the song gradually builds up a sense of...... well, i'll leave that unwritten because that's the main problem with William at the moment. Yes, this is a debut album and even with all the nice noises they make here and there you have to question ultimately what the actual point of them is? They seem to have ideas beneath the surface, so hopefully their next batch of tunes will be enough to actually transport a listener and provide enough entertainment to justify someone forking out a tenner on it.

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