E-Paper
Volume, control
I’ll get this out of the way right at the beginning: I have a problem about bands having their parents on the cover of their album.
I’ll get this out of the way right at the beginning: I have a problem about bands having their parents on the cover of their album. It’s one thing to do this kind of thing when you’re coming out with a ‘Best of...’ retrospective record — you know, Eric Clapton and his mum or Elton John and his grandmom. But Them Clones’ debut album, Love. Hate. Heroes not only has an extended family group photo on its cover but it’s also littered with homely — rather than homey — pictures of dinner table moments, living room scenes with moms and pops looking their moms-and-pops-of-rock band members best. It’s just bad form to have liner notes interspersed with photos not of childhood pictures with young parents (thereby suggesting an ironic nostalgia) but with contemporary pictures of parents and their post-adolescent offsprings. It’s as bad as having your parents sit in the front row at your gig or telling a crowd, “Dudes, say no to drugs and drink! Rock’n’roll!”
With the innovative aspects of this album — like a free song download link, a blank CD to burn the album on and pass it on — already written about two weeks ago by Sanjoy ‘www’ Narayan in his Download Central column, there’s only one other thing I need to talk about: the music.
Discounting the opening one-and-a-half minute intro, ‘..’ (did we really need it?), we get into ‘The bomb song’. The whisper of a start that looks forward to a growl thanks to some Tom Morello-kind of raging guitars leads up to an anthemic chorus. As an anti-war song (“What more should anybody say/Of the guns and the bombs that blow you away”), the climactic line “Long live the dead!” is alive and kicking. Guitarist Gucci Singh’s lyrics mix well with Prithwish Dev’s clear as tripwire vocals and the band’s tight sound. You can feel the track’s baby mushroom cloud.
The guitar chops in ‘Downer’ are enough to headbang a wall into rubble. Prithwish’s voice here has turned granier, until it erupts in the snarl of “Downer on the run making everybody turn/Everybody run like an animal.” ‘Spunk’ has the guitar throbbing like a blood vessel and then spurts thrash-Metallica-style with “Somewhere someone’s always bending over again” — the word ‘bending’ breaking and curling away to become ‘bey-ndey’ as if James Hetfield’s in the house.
We get inside the good old and dependable grunge machine in ‘My life’. Them Clones must have their Stone Temple Pilots posters still firmly stuck on their walls. Prithwish sings powerfully with a confidence that Scott Weiland may have now frittered away for good. This is clearly the strongest track in the album, the music swirling around a rippling backbone. ‘Sindrome’ continues the tough sound, with those STP trademark dips in the middle.
My problem is with the slower numbers. The words of ‘Follow the prophet’ adds to its sonic limpness: “Teachers, be there/My friends be there/ Mama, be there...” Cringe! But nothing like the way I crumpled on hearing the line in the Lobo-sounding ‘Colour’: “I won’t stain you.” You don’t say that to a girl even in a ‘sensitive’ song, boys — unless it’s in a bad prophylactic ad.
So Us Listeners and Them Clones, stick to the heavier stuff. The strength of Love. Hate. Heroes lies in its louder, guitar-driven songs where them guys show what a tight’n’heavy sound they can generate.
