For an impetuous loudmouth who is apparently obsessed with punk, Alan McGee is remarkably fond of namby-pamby power-pop. His Poptones label has spent its first year cluttering record-shop shelves with identikit albums of lovelorn tunes, largely the work of men born roughly between 1967 and 1974, who play music as though we were caught in a time loop, reliving those same years over and over.
Last summer McGee denounced Coldplay for making bedwetters' music, but the average Poptones release is no less characterless or mewling, for all its peppy chords and psychedelic twinges. Bright and breezy Arnold and their labelmate support act, bright and breezy Thomson, could almost swap setlists and play each other's songs without anyone noticing.
To be fair, Arnold do have one distinguishing feature: frontman Phil Morris. With his shaggy mane of blonde hair and lips permanently teetering on the edge of a pout, he looks like a cross between Heath Ledger and Kurt Cobain. When he sings, his voice reels from what could be a young Elvis Costello to the soft-rock stylings of a young Jon Bon Jovi. He oozes attitude and sardonic charisma. Between songs, he points at his friends and heckles the audience. While playing, he shakes his head, hurls notes into the air as though serving in tennis, leans into the microphone and unravels wheezy, strangely angelic melodies. His voice is unusual, enticing, bolder and more colourful than it is on record, but it's saddled to lyrics that are depressingly pedestrian. Does he really have nothing more to say than "My heart was broken in two" or "I'll always be your friend"?
There are surprises in the set: the ethereal loveliness of Oh My, the shuffling sleaze of Tiny Car, the sudden and bewildering tempo change in Climb that sends the song lurching into abandoned rock. But nothing is quite as perplexing as the contrast between Morris's passion and the blank, covers-outfit air of his bandmates. McGee must have seen something in this quintet to cling to them through Creation's demise and on to the imminent release of their balmy but banal album, Bahamas. What it was, however, remains a mystery.
