ALBUM REVIEW - NO HOPE, NO FUTURE

“Think Before You Speak”, the début album from Morden four-piece Good Shoes, may not have been an original record but it was nonetheless an enthralling one. With the yelped vocals of frontman Rhys Jones and the memorable hooks of songs such as Sophia and Ice Age the band showed they had more to offer than many of their contemporaries. Three years later the band are back with “No Hope, No Future”, but after a long absence do the band still have the same power?

The answer, in short, is no. Rhys’ vocals sound for the most part flat and the songs here are nowhere near as catchy as those on the band’s first record. On a ten track album only half an hour long there is no room for filler - yet almost half the tracks here sound like b-side material.

On the positive side, Under Control and The Way My Heart Beats, both released as singles before the album came out, are as infectious as anything on their début, and the riff on Then She Walks Away is sure to burrow it’s way into your consciousness. However amongst these genuinely good songs and the merely average ones there are a couple of genuine stinkers. Everything You Do is a turgid mess, with Rhys’ languid vocals likely to induce a coma. I Know, meanwhile, is bogged down by overly earnest (an pretty awful) lyrics: “I think that if there’s a day of judgement then our leaders will be first against the wall”.

There’s some good ideas here, but considering how long the group have spent on this album it’s a shame that it sounds so rushed and unfinished. Hopefully Good Shoes will be able to release another album as good as their début, and they remain a great live band, but this is a pretty disappointing effort from a group which once seemed so promising.

5/10

Jed. x