Tvt
2007
A Strange Education
About This Album
In the explosion of Smiths- and Joy Division-influenced bands to emerge at the beginning of the 21st century was, besides the Editors and the Interpols of the world, a four-piece group from Glasgow, the Cinematics. Following the same repeating-riff heavy path as their peers, the band, with their Morrissey-voiced lead singer Scott Rinning, write clean, well-structured songs that build up and then break down around the eighth-note basslines and driving electric guitars. The formula is fairly consistent throughout the entirety of their debut full-length, A Strange Education, but when it comes together well, like in the dancey "Break" or "Maybe Someday," it's as good as anything else out there. Unfortunately, this can't be said about the entire album. While it starts out well enough, the first four tracks dark and catchy and fun, the band soon slips into more standard rock arrangements, with churning, reverby chords instead of syncopated, edgy riffs and rhythms. Their cover of Beck's "Sunday Sun," while not bad, does nothing to really make it their own, and "Alright" can never quite figure itself out, how it wants to fit the instrumentation in with the vocals, and ends up being more disconcerting than anything else.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,3,7 and 10)

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