8

The spice of life.

If you are going to sound like a popular singer, there are worse people to resemble than Neil Diamond and that’s exactly what Kevin M. Thompson sounds like. Money talks but it don’t sing and dance and it certainly don’t walk but the Penny Black Remedy seem to be in a hurry to cram in as many sounds and styles as they can on ’95 Charing Cross Road’. Getting past the Jazz Singer likeness, the track opens with a rollocking intro that gives the impression we could be racing off into ‘Rawhide’. Sadly, there is the whiff of The Divine Comedy about this track, a sense of ‘hey, listen to us, how clever are we at shoving in so much stuff, we’re better than your run of the mill guitar band’. Its fair to say they’re different and will certainly develop their own particular fanbase but to be honest, the sort of people who deliberately go out of their way to be a massive fan of this type of band are not the sort of people you would want to associate with.

’95 Charing Cross Road’ has a sort of novelty track written all over it, like a watered down ‘Tubthumping’ or ‘Tequila’, something that everyone could know and cheer when it came on but would grow lifeless pretty quickly and would be the benchmark for everything else that was to follow. Its one thing setting out a niche for themselves with a song but it’s an altogether different thing backing yourself into a corner by trying to be all things to all people. There's country, rockabilly, ska, pop and world music in here and sometimes less would definitely be more. Many of you will love this song so fill your boots for now but don’t come running to us at the end of the summer when you’ve got a broken heart and a headache.