Embrace - 'I Can't Come Down'
Quick prejudice check...who thinks Embrace are cack? Who thinks they always release this exact song over and over again, sometimes faster, sometimes slower, and who thinks that this, plus the only-slightly-grown-out Britpop hairdos mark them down as the Forrest Gumps of rock? Everyone else changes, they stay the same, and in the end, they can play table-tennis REALLY well and have run across America nine times. Anyone think that?
Well, if you do, first of all, that's just plain spooky, cos I only just made that analogy up in my head, but secondly, it's hardly fair. No-one wants to hear Danny McNamara try and get his unelastic larynx around some New Rave whoop-fest, or, worse still, try and go hip hop, or metal...or COUNTRY, can you imagine? So, bearing in mind they've made it this far, how could they change tack now?
Rock bands - more so than pop acts or grime 'crews' or any other combination of musically-minded folk - are all about the strange chemistry between a bunch of people, and what those people can do when they pool their unique talents. In the case of the 'Brace, what they can do is write the kind of enormous puffed-up stadium-filling rock ballad which perfectly soundtracks the moment in a film where the hero is alone, it's raining, and he (it's always a he) is wondering how his life has gone so badly wrong, and what he can do to get back on track.
Kinda specific talent, innit? So don't blame them just because you're not the emotionally-troubled man-hero in a film. Somebody out there is, and Embrace are doing them proud, dammit!
Released: December 4th
(Fraser M)
