Levellers - Last Man Alive
After spending around ten minutes trying to tear into the shrink-wrap for this single I was not in the best of moods, surely a band that has been around as long as the Levellers should know by now that reviews and A&R people hate shrink-wrap? But I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt as I was intrigued to hear what the Levellers sound like these days, I hadn't heard anything by them since 'Hope Street'.
The track starts off promisingly until the vocals kick in, it's kind of like an old drunk on his way home, meandering through a song in no particular key and only knowing half of the words. The violin also sounds weak in the verses, like every string is very slightly out of tune or being played by a kid from the local school orchestra. Thankfully, the chorus kicks in pretty quickly, and it's good solid stuff. Sadly, you soon realise that the chorus is pretty much all the song has to offer. The big meaty guitars help to mask the sound of the violin and vocals and the whole thing sounds pretty good, although sometimes it's like you're listening to two records being played at the same time as there's so much going on in the choruses; I guess that's what the producer would call 'making a huge sound'.
Naturally the chorus hook is repeated over and over and it's pretty much all you'll remember of the song, which is good as it's the best bit, and it's not even that great. Now I would have given this single a terrible score if it wasn't for the b-side 'When Love Runs Out Of Time'. This really should have been the single, it's an enchanting acoustic ballad sung superbly with beautiful lyrics. With the current trend in the charts towards singer-songwriter type material, I think this song would have done fantastically well. It's worth buying the single just for this track, sadly the A-side really lets it down!