4

Bad Cake

Archangel is Nick Webber, a young man who spent a year and a half locked away in a studio in the wilds of Wiltshire, writing, performing and recording his own material. Certainly wearing his influences on his sleeve on his latest release, it appears that during Webber’s self-imposed incarceration he locked himself away with some choice CDs for inspiration and those ‘inspirations’ have bled quite heavily into the music which he has created.

With fey, generic indie vocals (think one of the lesser bands of the late 90’s) which strays off into falsetto territory at points and sounds remarkably like David Bowie during the refrain of “always, always, always forever”, Webber doesn’t immediate grab the listener with a distinct sense of originality and inventiveness.

‘Loud and Clear’ is simply a recipe which has not worked. If we use a generic cake recipe to represent the track, it has been over-sugared with tooth aching sentiment; over-floured, but unleavened by the mediocre and despite being fattened up with obvious influences, it has been over-egged by a multitude of distracting musical nuances.

Ultimately, what has come out of the studio oven is not a tasty audio treat but something which is rather flat, cloying and wholly unappealing.

Despite the lofty title, Archangel fail to achieve anything like an angelic sound.