Another day wasted...
I'm going to do something radical (hey I watched 'Point Break' last night so I'm allowed to use the lingo). Don't read the rest of this review until you've taken a tour of the Luke Toms website. Go on: open a new window, type in www.luketoms.com, have a bit of a browse and I'll see you in a couple of minutes...
*whistles; taps foot impatiently; reads paper; smokes cigarette; drinks beer; teaches passing beagle the lyrics to Toto's 'Africa' (now re-named 'Arfrica'); genies box of matches*
Are you back? How nice to see you again. So what did you think? Is it just me or is this guy a complete fucking idiot? In my opinion, anyone who maintains a website of such gaudy pomposity and comprehensive narcissism deserves to be strung up by his polka-dotted cravat until he be dead.
Luke Toms brands himself as a foppish Wodehousian hero, i.e. "Tally Ho girls! Here's an idea: Let's play a few rounds of croquet, take in a moving picture, then decamp to my second flat in the Metropolis for a few light hands of cribbage and a brandy snifter". What a pretentious dick. I'm a big fan of Wodehouse's tales of Jeeves & Wooster and The Drones Club etc etc, but do you see me poncing about the place in a three-piece tweed suit, brandishing paper money the size of The Daily Telegraph and whistling 'We''ll Meet Again'? No you do not. Why? Because it's stupid.
Toms has got an escape route though. If 'Another Day' is a bona-fide belter of a tune, I'll let it all slide. I'll eat my words, polish my top hat and join him for a quick Charleston at the Ritz before stealing a policeman's helmet on the way home and getting thrown in chokey for the night.
Oh dear. That IS a shame. It seems that because Toms has spent so much of his time crafting a ludicrous public persona, he's forgotten to write a half-way decent tune. How to describe it? A Divine Comedy album track performed by tone-deaf marmosets with learning difficulties. Ouch.
And another thing Toms. I understand you wrote the tune. I understand you played and arranged a few of the instruments. But do you really think that justifies having your name appear SIX times on the sleeve? No it does not. Reading the back of the sleeve does, however, highlight how many people contributed to the recording, mixing and engineering of this single. Didn't at least one of them spot that it was a clanger or were they working on an hourly rate?
Ah ha! you cry. So it's a case of too many cooks spoiling the broth is it? No, it isn't. 'Another Day' is a limp, bland bowl of gruel that tastes like it was knocked up by a couple of toddlers who (bored with torching cars on the mean streets of Kensington) decided to piss away some time by fucking around with a Fisher Price Kitchen Set. And they probably pissed in the resulting slop before they ladled it up too.
Just like supermarket-own-brand crisps, 'Another Day' is best avoided. Pass the barley water Vicar, I'm parched.