Buswell - Buy Me New Shoes

  by Emma Dawson

published: 8 / 2 / 2007

---

First things first, the cover sleeve for Buswell’s album, 'Buy Me New Shoes', does not inspire a great deal of confidence in its contents. It’s a picture of lead singer doing a “Hey! I’m so chilled, man”, Jack Johnson impression, complete with a disturbing close up of one of his supposedly well-worn feet presumably exemplifying the fact that he’s a dude who’s just come back from travelling the world. A bad start. And, sadly, it doesn’t get any better from there. While Buswell purports to be a band, it is in fact the surname of the lead singer Shaun Buswell, which suggests it’s a simply a vehicle for him to unload a string of uninspiring songs that lie firmly at the cheesiest end of the electro-folk sound. And (surprise, surprise) the aforementioned Mr Johnson pervades this album like a particularly nasty smell. The whole album is heavy on the instrumentation, with strings the principal augmentation. Now, we all know that string arrangements can be the making of a great song, but they are too often used to lend artificial gravitas to, or simply try and cover up, a poor one. In the case of Buswell, the latter is the case throughout this album. Buswell seems to think that employing strings immediately equates to creating good songs. It doesn’t seem to have occurred to him that one needs good songs at the outset. Moreover, having supposedly multi-talented musicians is one thing, but without the raw material to work with, their efforts are unfortunately made redundant. Buswell clearly sees himself as the main man here, with the musical backing simply a vehicle for his nondescript ditties. Sadly, his songwriting skills just aren’t up to the job, his voice lacks any distinctive character and the album as a whole is largely devoid of interesting ideas. There are a number of new folk-rock UK acts around at the moment such as the North West’s Superkings, producing intelligent material, with the same musical elements, that puts Buswell’s bland warblings to shame. Buswell needs to do some contemporary musical homework, or he’ll firmly remain in music’s bus lane.

Track Listing:-

1 The Barfly
2 Don't Go Wasting Time
3 More
4 Let Me Love
5 The Drugs Are Making You Love (Album Version)
6 He's Only Looking At Other Women Because He's Not Happy With Himself
7 3:15 From LAX
8 Buy Me New Shoes
9 Between The Murders & Death
10 Sleep
11 You May Climb Over Me

Post A Comment

---

Comment

Name

your name

Location

ie London, UK

Submit

Check box to submit

Adam Coxon
Adrian Janes
Amanda J. Window
Andrew Twambley
Anthony Dhanendran
Benjamin Howarth
Cila Warncke
Daniel Cressey
Darren Aston
Dastardly
Dave Goodwin
Denzil Watson

Dixie Ernill
Dominic B. Simpson
Eoghan Lyng
Fiona Hutchings
Harry Sherriff
Helen Tipping
Jamie Rowland
John Clarkson
Julie Cruickshank
Kimberly Bright
Lisa Torem
Maarten Schiethart

Malcolm Carter
Marie Hazelwood
Mark Rowland
Nick Dent-Robinson
Nicky Crewe
Nige Nudds
Philamonjaro
Richard Lewis
Shirley Procter
Spencer Robertshaw
Steev Burgess
Steve Kinrade

Steve Miles
Tommy Gunnarsson
Zena Grieg