Sometimes people just have to be cruel, especially when they're asked to listen to the worst album they've heard in a decade. Anyone who writes reviews will eventually get used to reading all kinds of press releases, from the useful detailed biographic ones to the amusingly erroneous ones to the ones that are quite clearly ridiculous hype for vapid old rope with no substance whatsoever. If The Fly magazine is calling a band genius then any music lover with any aesthetic sense whatsoever will see red hype alarm bells flashing. (The Fly is a faux-fanzine, set up by London based PR wafflers and is given away free at various venues throughout the UK, so that drunk faux-indie kids have something to use when the toilet paper runs out.)
 
Mower prove that even if you make the shittiest most talentless retro crap excuse for rockpops, some idiot somewhere will call it genius. The band try to rock but just don't. The singer can't sing. If he was someone interesting with original ways of deploying the limited range, this wouldn't matter a bit. Matt Motte writes stupid twee ditties about such mundane trivialities as going to a hip-club and not having enough money to pay for a German girl's drink, thus getting her thrown out. All delivered with the charm of a dead clown rotting in the garbage. The smugness of his toss off bathtime warbling stinks of the worst kind of desperate watery wannabe. He's a fuckin' idiot with nothing worth saying. The effort of strumming the guitar with tired unremarkable chord sequences that have already been used a million times probably did his brain in years ago. The press release also compares these listless dorks with no originality or talent to Buzzcocks, Nirvana, Black Sabbath, the Kinks and Ringo Starr (not the greatest drummer that ever walked the earth, but apparently Mower's lad does the plod 'on amphetamines'). This is so grossly insulting to all these bands that I suggest their remains sue Mower. At least that would stop them making another record. Really Jilted John would be a more accurate comparison for Mower, but who gives a fuck about that irritating nerd? Ten years ago this would've been retro enough to ride the coat-tails of the squalid Britpap scene, rightly slagged by interesting musicians such as Michael Gira and Robert Hampson as one of the worst things that ever happened to music. Now its just a sick joke that even the thickest Oasis fan would be embarrassed by. Now for the ultimate insult: even Blur were better than this!
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