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Razorlight - 'Hold On'

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Fraser McAlpine | 10:20 UK time, Wednesday, 4 July 2007

RazorlightIt's easy to find fault with Razorlight. They've a lead singer who doesn't seem grateful for the positive attention he's been getting since his band first took off. He also seems to want to en-big-ify his songs so that they reach the widest possible audience, possibly at the expense of the little quirks and squeaks that made his older songs reach the people they got to in the first place. Plus that voice is a little thin, and those lyrics are a little weak. So what exactly is driving that naked ambition and making the skinny fella act so smugly (seeing as Razorlight fall short of being an actual cure for terminal illness and stuff)?

Insanity, perhaps? Denial? It's something like that, anyway. And it's not the sort of stuff you want to mess with without due cause. So, assessing the worth of another Razorlight single - the fifth off the band's self-titled second album - is kind of strange.

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No matter what filthy barbs get thrown his way, Johnny B has a hide like an elephant, he's not gonna change what he does, even if all the reviewers in the world barricaded all the recording studios in the world, and frankly I've got a good book on the go at the moment, so you can count me out.

Having said that, Razorlight aren't all bad either, even if it hurts to grant Ego-Boy any justification at all. Take this song, a perfectly nice, soulful rave-up (as they used to say back in the '60s), featuring sterling work from Nice Andy the drummer, and Johnny's best helium-elf warble.

Oh sure, it runs out of melodic ideas almost as soon as it starts, and the super-clean production stops the song from ever really getting a stomp on, but by and large, this is the kind of thing you want from your big indie bands - stirring music played with a bit of vim.

Shame the new Travis single takes the same approach, and with better results, mind. And do you see THEM claiming to be better than Jesus/Dylan/Hendrix/Stephen Hawking? No, you do not.

Three starsDownload: Out now
CD Released:
July 9th

(Fraser McAlpine)

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