Nearly... but not quite.
After the top forty success of the band's last single, 'You've Got Nothing On Me' and the producing talents of Mike Clink (responsible for Guns N' Roses' Appetite for Destruction and the twin Use Your Illusion albums) the success of The Glitterati's self-titled debut album seemed a sure thing. And in many ways, The Glitterati is a thoroughly enjoyable album; fans of the band will already be familiar with the ballsy strut of 'You Got Nothing On Me', 'Do You Love Yourself' and 'Here Comes A Close Up', while tracks like 'You Need You' and 'Heartbreaker' which appeared as B-sides on earlier singles have been re-recorded and given a new twist for the album. And although 'Betterman', 'You Got Nothing On Me' and 'Heartbreaker' get the album off to a promising start with the typically sleazy, arrogant vocals, trashy guitar sound and big, dirty riffs it's not long before things begin to fall apart...
'Still Thinking About You' has a hypnotic melody and a slightly darker sound than many of the songs, with the guitars adopting a more swaggering, bluesy feel in comparison to the heavy Rock 'n' Roll of tracks like 'You Need You' and the Glam stylings of 'Here Comes A Close Up'. 'Back in Power' has laid back sway and an irresistible melody, but there's something annoyingly radio-friendly about this track, which is also the case with the slightly sickening and rather too familiar sounding, 'Don't Do Romance', but by the time you reach 'First Floor' mid-way through the album none of this matters, as by this point it already feels distinctly mediocre.
Perhaps the most disappointing part of the whole thing is the anticlimax of the album's ending; as a band who's singles have always left you tingling with anticipation, the slow moving 'Keep Me Up All Night' feels like an unexciting end to an album that never really hit the spot in the first place and, like nearly all of the slower songs here, descends into rather predictable rhyming couplets.
If you liked the singles then there's nothing on this album that you can really dislike, the raw vocals, dirty riffs and the arrogant, sexy strut that make The Glitterati so appealing are all here, but the album never really comes to the kind of crescendo that the singles promised. Perhaps it was inevitable that the album would never live up to the hype surrounding the band or manage to capture the raw energy of a live performance; The Glitterati is a good enough to have playing in the background but seems to be missing the vital spark needed to really make the band come to life.