Welsh group Stereophonics have been around for a good couple of decades now and although they’re slightly less common on our screens and radio stations, the group is still going strong albeit with a few line-up changes over the years…
‘Keep the Village Alive’ sees them return with their ninth studio album, a relatively short ten track affair, many of which were recorded during their previous album ‘Graffiti on the Train’ in 2013. The original concept was to have a trilogy of albums (with ‘Keep the Village Alive’ the second in the sequence) but this idea was dropped in favour of two separate releases and the two albums should be considered as a duology. This is also the first album to feature the work of drummer Jamie Morrison, who replaced Javier Weyler after 8 years with the group.
It starts off as a fairly cheerful and bouncy affair with album opener (and first single) ‘C’est La Vie’. Whilst it’s a little simple and repetitive for my liking, it’s an effective and upbeat indie-rock tune that you wouldn’t turn off if it came on the radio. The following couple of songs, ‘White Lies’ and ‘Sing Little Sister’, start off in a similarly catchy way but again don’t really develop a lot and are generally listenable but forgettable at the same time.
‘Keep the village alive‘ was released on Stylus Records.
The second single ‘I Wanna Get Lost With You’ is more involved and is likely to be the track that you’ll still hear on the radio or the TV music channels in a few years time. ‘Song for the Summer’, with its string arrangements is a layered yet very melodic change down in pace and is followed by my favourite song for the album ‘Fight or Flight’. Its hypnotic rhythm and eerie sound effects in the background make it stand out against the safe and standard songs that come before and after it.
‘My Hero’ comes next and is a bit of a surprise because it starts off like one of those classic Christmas ballads your parents played on Christmas Eve. Sleigh bills aside, the song’s a bit wet and sounds like it was written for a traditional British romantic comedy. In the final third the album gets a little more serious with ‘Sunny’ slowing things down with moody piano chords and more of the string arrangements only to bring things up again with a swinging rhythm. It’s all well produced and the layers of various instruments add somewhat of a powerful atmosphere, but it just doesn’t sound like a coherent song structure. Instead it’s almost like 3 different song ideas were lazily pasted together with a guitar solo at the end and comes across very much as a B-side.
Thankfully, the guitar intro to ‘Into the World’ brings a slightly melancholy but soulful lament that feels genuine and heartfelt. The string arrangement paired with acoustic guitar and keys really brings out the emotion of the song. Album closer ‘Mr and Mrs Smith’ is what I would call a traditional Stereophonics song ; mid-tempo, clean melodic guitar mixed with a bit of rock (but not too much!) and a straight ahead rhythm. Compared to the rest of the album it’s pretty long at over 6 minutes but then it’s more likely one to get the audience clapping along at concerts than to be added to your favourite playlist.
At just over forty minutes it’s not a long album (7 of the 10 songs are under 4 minutes), but that’s probably a good thing as most of the songs are pretty uninspiring and are formulaic. For the most part ‘Keep the Village Alive’ is an album of bland and safe song writing that just feels a little too generic. Nobody expects any artist to reinvent the wheel every album and sometimes all you want is more of the good stuff you’ve heard before. However, there’s no great memorable track on here like ‘Dakota’ or ‘Have a Nice Day’ that we’ve heard from previous albums and that is what I suspect most people wanted.
Rating: 5/10
Author – Steve, Bristol store
