The Bluetones, Luxembourg
It may be a small, quite innocuous country filling the cleavage of Belgium, France and Germany, but everyone’s heard of Luxemburg. Clean, neutral and home to European Court of Justice, Luxemburg does nothing much to bother anyone – but still you know what its flag looks like.
In much the same way, The Bluetones have seemed to come by fame without doing too much at all to upset people. Darlings of Britpop, The ‘tones have stood by and watched their contemporaries, Sleeper, Cast, Menswear et al fall by the wayside through years of indifference. Rather than succumb to the same fate, The Bluetones have evolved somewhat over the past few years.
Their fourth studio album, Luxembourg, is a departure from previous projects and weighing in at just 35mins, it certainly needs to pack a punch. Mark Morris’s tongue-in-cheek lryics still remain, as do guitarist Adam Devlin’s irresistable licks and melodies, but the meandering parochial feel to their music has been replaced with something just ever so slightly more urgent.
Stripped down and straight forward songs such as "Liquid Lips" (one half of the double A side single) with it’s T-Rex hat on and opener "Here It Comes Again" showcase a back to basics approach, while "Never Going Nowhere" gives an air that something great might be on the cards. As an album, its fine, but what’s more exciting is that the urgency and rawness pounding out the speakers is not only being toured this month, but also being performed at Gradball this summer, as the boys have been added to this year’s line-up. Reason to spend seventy quid?
Like Luxemburg, The Bluetones may be small, but well known. What might also be true given this evidence is that both share a degree of undiscovered beauty, just waiting to strike.
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