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1st February 1997, N.M.E.
You know the people. Nine of them inhabited every sixth-form common room in Britain between the years of 1990 and 1992. Oversized black jumper, DMs, glum expression ... They weren't goths, but a combination of the fashionable music at the time and confused hormones meant that they saw out their secondary education by sitting in corners acting depressed and reciting the self-deprecating gags of Robert Newman.
The remainder of these troubled adolescents have, it seems, become members of Portsmouth's Cranes. Every so often they get back together - this is their sixth album - to pretend that The Cure have just released 'Wish', safe in the knowledge that the resulting album will be purchased by the same few devotees and steadfastly ignored by the rest of the world.
Time for a change then? Of course not! 'Population Four' comes with the traditional dreary,semi-goth industro-acoustic guitars along with a fatal attempt to 'grunge out' ('Fourteen') and irksome, infantile vocals. Allison Shaw's squeaky narration (vaguely discernable theme: girl buys tarantula, girl finds she has very few friends) is often reminiscent of Altered Images' Clare Grogan. The only difference being that, unlike Grogan, she doesn't sing about birthdays and jolliness, she sings about death and witches. Usually over what sounds like a gently whirring circular saw ('Tangled Up'; 'Brazil').
But the fun doesn't end there. There's the Edgar Allen Poe at-childs-birthday-party scenario that is 'Angel Bell' to come, with the accompanying sensation that you are listening to the aural equivalent of sherbet-coated arsenic.
Unfortunately though, there's also the overall feeling that 'Population Four' is not a record that belongs on 1997 but rather in a large area of secluded woodland with an extremely tall perimeter fence.
(3/10)
Reviewed by Tom Cox
© NME 1997
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