Frank Turner - Love Ire and Song

  by Daniel Cressey

published: 6 / 4 / 2008

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Punk-turned-folkie Frank Turner’s latest album looks set to solidify his position as one of Britain’s better new songwriters. He has an undoubted talent with a guitar and a catchy tune. Sadly, on some of the tracks here he also has a tendency to be rather overblown. At the climax for ‘Jet Lag’, for instance’ he gives the chorus of an otherwise pleasant slow song a totally unnecessarily over the top warbling. The simpler tracks here are by far the best, and not just vocally. There’s a parallel tendency to go overboard on the instruments and much of this album would benefit from a less is more approach. There are some fine tracks here. The single ‘Photosynthesis’ is brilliant. As is ‘St Christopher Is Coming Home’. It is noticeable that Turner is at his best when tackling everyday subjects (getting old and not seeing enough of your friends respectively on those two tracks). This is the approach that served him well on his last album, 'Sleep Is For The Week'. What made that so listenable was fact you could immediately relate to the subject matter – losing in love, cups of tea, hangovers – even if you couldn’t have put it to music so well. That element is missing from much of this new album, unless you tend to live the jet set, international lifestyle of a rising alt-folk star and are used to taking home the prettiest girl in the club (‘Jet Lag’ and ‘To Take You Home’ off this release). Actually ‘To Take You Home’ is one of the best tracks here, and Turner seems to be wryly aware he may be over doing the self promotion, noting on ‘Reasons Not To Be An Idiot’, “I’m not as awesome as this song makes out.” Actually, he probably is musically and he shows it on occasions. But he only really shows it when he’s not trying so hard.

Track Listing:-

1 I Knew Prufrock Before He Got Famous
2 Reasons Not to Be an Idiot
3 Photosynthesis
4 Substitute
5 Better Half
6 Love Ire & Song
7 Imperfect Tense
8 To Take You Home
9 Long Live the Queen
10 A Love Worth Keeping
11 St. Christopher Is Coming Home
12 Jet Lag

Band Links:-

http://www.frank-turner.com
http://www.facebook.com/frankturnermusic
https://twitter.com/frankturner

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