Friday, September 04, 2009

The Rumble Strips


The Rumble Strips are another band who have not enjoyed 2009. Their new album was derided by critics, as much for it's Mark Ronson connections as anything else (although, in the case of the execrable 'Douglas', thoroughly deserved criticism) and it is as if everyone forgot how novel their trumpet/sax/guitar sound was back in 2006.

Live, it becomes clear that among those people are The Rumble Strips themselves. Whilst the old material is uplifting and engaging, the new music has lost sight of what made them special, abandoning the horns for more guitars and piano. Unfortunately, none of the material is strong enough to cope with this - in fact, with the exception of recent single 'Not The Only Person', there's nothing very interesting here at all. Which makes it more surprising that so many old songs - such as the sublime 'Oh Creole' - are abandoned in favour of dross such as 'Daniel'.

There is definitely a future for The Rumble Strips, but they need to re-discover who they are first.

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