THE PRESS RELEASE
“Courteeners release their long awaited sixth album More. Again. Forever. The band’s most confident and consistent record to date, More. Again. Forever. features ten new tracks that are guaranteed to cement their place as one of the country’s biggest and best-loved bands. Heavy Jacket is the first single taken from the album – a gigantic piano and siren led call to arms.”
MY TWO CENTS
You can’t remember everything and everybody. Leastways I sure as hell can’t. Just ask the people who have been treated to blank stares when they bounced up to me somewhere and started yapping away like we were all palsy-walsy. Hell, I’ll probably forget writing this damn thing five minutes after I post it. So I feel no shame in admitting that somehow, sometime over the past decade, Liam Fray and his Courteeners got totally 86ed from my overtaxed memory banks, just like … um … you know … that guy with the thing. In my defence, it ain’t totally my bad — after all, it’s not like these blokes ever managed to make more than a microscopic impact on these shores. Still, I know I have a copy of their 2008 debut St. Jude around here somewheres. I mighta even reviewed it. But fact of the matter is I’m not even sure I’ve heard their past few albums. I’m glad I stumbled on this one, though. Despite its overreaching title, More. Again. Forever. delivers a reasonably sound, sensible and satisfying batch of thumpy, fuzzy Mancunian indie-rock that shares some DNA with everyone from homeboys like Oasis and Stone Roses to mainstays like Blur and The Jam. No shame in that either. Granted, it ain’t all backrubs and BJs. I could have done without a couple of the ballads and poppier jingle-janglers. But maybe that’s just me. For all I know, those will be your faves. All I know is that now I gotta find some time to go back and listen to their other albums. And try to remember next time they come around. Wish me luck.
