The School

The School "Loveless Unbeliever" (Elefant, 2010)



Spector's Ghosts and Primitives

I always had a thing for any number of those female singer indie pop bands of the eighties and nineties who were touted as the next big thing. All of them had the pre-requisite Motown girl group thing down to a tee - I'm thinking of the Primitives and their ilk. Maybe I'm being a bit previous but on first glance 'Loveless Unbeliever' fits really easily into the typecast. 'Let it Slip' has lots of hummable chorus and "come on come on come on" breaks. There's even a hand clap section. It's not to say it's bad, just it never crosses the line from pleasant and disposable into compelling and vital. 

That said, songs such as 'Is He Really Coming Home' have a Kirsty MacColl lilt and that's no bad thing either. It's not that I don't like well-crafted pop - and this is really well done - but for it to be stunning there must be a distinction between this and all of the rest. 'Summer's Here' actually sounds like you think it would sound. 'Valentine' is really all big choruses. I love 'I Want You Back' because it falls away from the formula a little bit and stands out with a careworn refrain. Even when they tone down the cheeriness and aim for the heart strings ('I Love Everything', 'All I Wanna Do') it ends up sounding like Tracey Ullman (if you're too young to know who she is, google her). 'The One Who Left Me' even has the spoken word intro - it's not like they're not trying is it?

I really do like lots of this in a 'I'm-12-again' sort of way, because it brings back so many memories. I just don't know whether they're mine. Ultimately, this feels a bit too much like the 'wall of sound' recreation has been mastered but the songs and the passion got left behind. It's lovely, but ultimately lacking anything resembling depth. If you wanted a bit of cheery pop to pass the time, you could always give it a try, and, for all i know they'll be huge.