Scouting For Girls - 'I Wish I Was James Bond'
It's probably bad manners to begin a review with a technical, muso-type question, but there's something that needs clearing up. In the verses to this song, is Roy Stride singing a major key melody over the minor key bits, and a minor key melody over the major key bits? Is this something we're allowing these days? It certainly doesn't sound like the kind of thing we should encourage, sounding as it does like a dog's breakfast of clashing notes. And not good clashing notes either.
See what I mean? It just sounds wrong. Wronger than Greg's spoken-word introduction, where a nation's collective forehead scrumples up at the clunkiness of the line "mixing business with girls", and that is saying something.
The upshot of all this wrongness is that when the band revert to their trademark perky stop-start / descending-chords song routine - the template they have been criticised for sticking to like its a security blanket and they are nine - it comes as a sonic relief. Which is also saying something.
Plus it's a bit of a tacky cash-in on Quantum Of Solace coming out, and the ninety-twelfth single to be taken from the band's debut album. An album which already boasts a song about Elvis, so they're in danger of becoming a band who do irritating songs about popular culture, like a cross between the Feeling and the Wombats.
And I am fairly sure there are laws against that kind of thing. You certainly can't get a license for it, at any rate.
Download: Out now
CD Released: November 3th
(Fraser McAlpine)
Comment number 1.
At 28th Oct 2008, RealisticJimmy wrote:Simply put, it's a rubbish song anyway.
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Comment number 2.
At 28th Oct 2008, peejkerton wrote:It sounds like all of their other songs...
Again...
They need to give it a break. You are right, they sit right between The Wombats and the Feeling... All three of them hopefully on a bullet train heading towards a very thick concrete wall.
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