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AthleteTourist Parlophone/EMI It is somewhat unnerving, receiving a CD complete with a fourteen page, soft-bound booklet featuring five-star reviews and a statement declaring that the record has just reached number one on the mainstream UK music charts. At the time, I had never even heard of Athlete. My job now is to try and figure out what I might have thought of the album if my mind had not been corrupted. I have come up with two options. The first is that 'Tourist' may have struck me as being an extremely well produced, big, inspiring piece of introspective pop music. In this scenario, I may have likened it to Coldplay's 2002 album 'A Rush Of Blood To The Head'; opener Chances has all of the largesse of that album's Politik, without the aggression; and first single Wires has all the simple pleasures of The Scientist. Oh, and the title track may have reminded me of Snow Patrol, a band I quite fancied last year. The other scenario is that I would have found this album interminably dull waste of expensive production techniques. In this scenario I would have likened it to Keane's 2004 album 'Hopes And Fears', an unimaginably pretentious pile of crap. In this scenario, I may have pointed out that Half Light sounds half arsed, and Yesterday Threw Everything At Me sounds like the musical equivalent of recycled plastic. There are other quite original moments on this record - If I Found Out and Modern Mafia are quirky pop songs that don't automatically refer to those other introspective guitar/piano bands built up on England's production line. It wouldn't surprise me if this got to number one here, either; that may not be a bad thing, but there's plenty out there more deserving.  |
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