Let’s not waste any time here: This record is a collection of electropop nonsense. An ignoble attempt to turn minimal Powerbook electronica into pop. Production lazily ripped off from Autechre and Pan Sonic is slapped next to wannabe profound lyrical nightmares, worsened by the crooned mockney delivery. ‘You Come As You Are’’s woeful couplets (“Faceless as a spaceman/You clutched your invitation”) provide a fine example of Silverware’s merits. The music itself isn’t entirely wasted – sometimes exuding a kind of sleepy charm – although it is unoriginal and vastly inferior to its influences. The interminably pretentious attempts at poetic meanderings that accompany the music are at best slightly tedious but tend to be desperately awful schoolboy musings. The music’s sparseness ensures that the third-person narratives about nameless women cannot be avoided by the listener. The nadir is reached on ‘The Station’; a song of particularly insipid observations about the unfortunate object of the lyricist’s attentions set in a railway station. “There could be delays,” the listener is told (as if anyone would care). “Eventually she gets on board/the doors will close automatically/the long train will do its slow shimmy.” This stuff is of poorer quality than the crazed ramblings of a stalker who writes love poetry in purple ink to his prey, which might explain why the poor woman in the songs is watched from a distance. But I digress. This duo perhaps wishes to be perceived as the Pet Shop Boys’ successors, whose quiet observations about modern life at least offer any listeners a degree of insight. Unfortunately, this is about as exciting and inspiring as the Backstreet Boys.
Track Listing:-
1 The Difference Between Silver and Grey2 You Came As Yourself
3 Tied To The Tracks
4 Waltzer
5 The Station
6 Transparent
7 Wintermission
8 In A Snowstorm
9 Saturnine
10 The Sea May Take A Few - It Will Deliver Some
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