REVIEW: EVERYBODY WAS IN THE FRENCH RESISTANCE… NOW! - FIXING THE CHARTS VOLUME ONE

I really wanted to like this. I’m a big fan of Eddie Argos and Art Brut, and when I first came across the EWITFR…N song Hey! It’s Jimmy Mack about a year ago I thought it was pretty good. Now they’ve finally got an album together, which should be cause for celebration, right? WRONG!

The gimmick behind EWITFR…N is that they write responses to pop songs they’ve taken issue with. Thus Avril Lavigne’s Girlfriend is taken to task in the interminable G.I.R.L.F.R.E.N. and Billie Jean becomes the puntastic Billie’s Genes. CAN YOU FEEL THE HILARITY? MY SIDES ARE BURSTING! There’s so much wrong with this record I really don’t know where to start. I’ll try though.

Music: Drum loops and some simple keyboard chords, almost every track sounds like it was recorded by a band who do bad covers for Karaoke machines - except they decided they should write their own material. Musically then, it’s pretty horrific.

Lyrics: Probably the best least bad thing about the album, but stuck within his self-imposed gimmick Argos shows only a shadow of the lyrical flair and wit found in your average Art Brut song. Most of the time he’s too busy tring to shoehorn in references to the songs he’s rebutting to write anything properly good.

Vocals: OK, so Argos has carved a niche as a pretty shit but nevertheless unique vocalist, but on this record he’s paired with Dyan Valdes who’s just…. well, average. Really, really mediocre. Their vocals really don’t work well together at all.

If I’m being generous, opening track Creeque Allies sort of works, and Hey! It’s Jimmy Mack (which for some inexplicable reason didn’t make it onto the album - probably to make way for the awful Kanye West-baiting Coal Digger) is actually good. Overall though, this is ill-thought out, poorly-executed and, to be blunt, shit.

2/10 - Come on Eddie! You can do better.

NB: I know this is very poorly written but I knocked it out in a flurry of sheer disappointment. It’s also representative of the shoddy quality of the album.