Two Door Cinema Club
are already an established act from the great.. Northern Ireland. They released
their debut album in 2010, called 'Tourist'. It wasn't very good. I know I'm
blunt, but yeah, it wasn't very good.. I'm not going to sit here and lie am
I!!! Moving on, Two Door Cinema Club are another electro rock / dance-punk-ish
PPR band. They have released a few good 'tunes'.. They're all singles,
undoubtedly, but they're decent enough for me to listen to. Beacon is their
second album, and it's such an improvement over Tourist History, but we're not
here to talk about Tourist History are we? This is for Beacon. So let's talk
Beacon Two Door Cinema Club fans.
Previously,
tracks like 'Something
Good Can Work' and 'What
You Knew' added a bit of spice in to their rather straightforward
structures. It's all pretty common and quite repetitive when you hear the same
thing over and over again. Sure, it's a different band each time.. But you're
hearing the same thing. You can hazard a guess that I don't like unoriginal music.
Are Two Door Cinema Club original? Not in the slightest. There's not one
original idea, drum rhythm, guitar riff or vocal refrain that hasn't been done
before. That doesn't apply to just Two Door Cinema Club, it applies to a high
majority of modern artists, some just know how to separate themselves from the
crowd, Two Door Cinema Club however, do not.
Nonetheless,
Beacon has some interesting material; Take 'Settle' for example, it
features a lovely atmospheric build up with the bass synthesizer and an
uplifting, air pounding rhythmic instrumental section. 'Handshake' serves up
the single material with plenty of loops and a pop like structure and vocal
progression. Take away the synth and the guitar and you have a prime time Radio
One pop track. Add Jessie J's voice and you have a hit, I'm serious. As far as
opening tracks go, 'Next
Year' is a good'un. The vocal progression is probably the most exciting
aspect of the track, with the drumming coming in a close second. I've kind of
grown old of the left sided lead guitar riffs. They reappear on almost..
Every.. Track.
'Wake Up' doesn't offer me
anything I'm afraid. The lyrics are pretty average and ineffective, same with
the layered vocals and again, that fucking left sided guitar. It worked a few
times for Joy Division, it worked once or twice for Interpol, The Strokes,
Editors.. Enough of this nonsense. If you want to sound post-punk, listen to
The Fall and realize that your left sided high pitched guitar Is fucking repetitive.
(Listens to The Fall for the next few hours..) And we're back. Two Door Cinema
Club really do take advantage of the three minute pop song structures. 10/11
tracks are within 3 - 4 minutes long. They're not everlasting, they're not
gripping and they're certainly not memorable with the left Guitar for fuck sake./ Guess what’s blanked out?
The
thing is, this album is well produced. Jacknife Lee is behind it (R.E.M,
Kasabian, The Hives). It's not a bad album, it's just not thought provoking or
enjoyable. I'm unable to enjoy this, because I know six/seven bands that have
released better, brighter and more textured albums with this kind of sound. 'Sleep Alone' sounds like
it's about to break in to a Bloc Party track, fortunately it doesn't otherwise
this would create chaos; it does break into another typical electro-rock Two
Door Cinema Club track. 'Sun'
and 'Someday' pass
straight through me. After six, seven listens, theirs still not one memorable
thing, other than the little distorted synth riff on Sun, which is kind of
catchy, yet bitter.
The
verdict: Beacon is a promising album. The first few tracks are of course, the
better ones; however they don't reflect the albums outcome at all. Although it
is an improvement on their previous effort Tourist History, Beacon is just an
irrelevant album. It's irrelevant because there's no reason for this album. It
doesn't add anything new to the Two Door Cinema Club.. Club. The back album
tracks are so predictable and off putting that they're not even worth
mentioning. Tourist History had them kind of tracks, but Beacon really does
take the piss with repetitiveness and unoriginality.
~Eddie
5.9
