Legends - Over and Over

  by Sarah Maybank

published: 6 / 5 / 2009

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Review

If Magnetic Fields are the new Jesus And Mary Chain, and the Jesus And Mary Chain are the new/old Jesus And Mary Chain, seeing as they’re back together again, where does that leave the Legends ? The band, which consists of feedback-swathed Swede, Johan Angergard, plus a roster of part-time collaborators, couldn’t be more Mary Chain if they donned spiral-curled William Reid wigs and engaged in a career-blighting campaign of deliberately upsetting every single person in the music industry. Listening to this, you’ll spend more time tune-spotting than singing along; the murky ‘Seconds Away’ is a doppelganger for ‘You Trip Me Up’ and, with its pounding, wall of sound drums, ‘Always The Same’ is pure ‘Single White Female’ in its obsession with ‘In A Hole’. The album’s strange, vocoder-ish vocals, and an 80s/90s pop sensibility that recalls bands like Garbage rather than the surly Reids, indicate it’s trying to use the Mary Chain as a starting point rather than hold a mirror to ‘Psychocandy’; the breezy boy/girl duet of ‘Monday To Saturday’ or the sweet, acoustic ‘Jump’ do their best to add variety. But overall you can help feeling this is a slightly workmanlike addition to those Raveonettes-type bands who like feedback and the Shangri Las’ club.

Track Listing:-

1 You Won
2 Seconds Away
3 Always The Same
4 Monday To Saturday
5 Heartbeats
6 Dancefloor
7 Turn Away
8 Recife
9 Over And Over
10 Jump
11 Something Strange Will Happen
12 Touch