BOXED IN - Boxed In

Boxed In, the project through which Oli Bayston goes solo after years spent roaming the English underground, starts out with nothing short of laudable intentions – a sizeable stint in Keith and various jobs as producer and songwriter for 2 Bears, George FitzGerald and Charlie Boyer And The Voyeurs, plus work as sound engineer on the hugely acclaimed debut by TOY. The underlying idea, a rather fascinating one, is, in his own words, to "merge the house imaginary with kraut-rock." Something that, to be fair, has already been attempted more than once, but whose framing here raised the best possible expectations.

Instead, the self-titled debut of this shape-shifting, ambitious creature turns out to be a failure on several fronts, first and foremost the fundamental one: achieving its stated goal. What the album contains are eleven pop songs of a monochrome, dated-sounding flavour, dressed up in an arrangement straight out of the worst house-retro stereotypes. Into these are then programmatically injected spacey inserts that could have been lifted wholesale from instrumental passages by Can and Cluster. All of it while completely ignoring the notion that these elements need some kind of unity, some glue that gives them, if not stylistic coherence, then at least a sense of purpose.

Then there's the songwriting, the area Bayston claims to have dwelt on longest and with the greatest dedication. Intentions and convictions we certainly won't argue with, unlike the results, which do need questioning. The opening trio is in itself pretty telling: a little march whose verse is blatantly lifted from "Californication" by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, with a malfunctioning spaceship planted at its core ("Mystery"); an unremarkable potential remix of something by Hercules And Love Affair ("Subtle Knife"); a possible tracing-paper copy of something off the second album by TOY ("All Your Love Is Gone").

The only redeeming feature here is that some passages glide by smoothly enough without weighing things down: just enough to salvage the slicked-back, lounge-bar pop of "No Joke", the vocal duet on "Bug" and the Bruno Mars-style hit grab of "Lo Life". A couple of interesting ideas surface amid the detonations of "Wild West" (one wonders whether some listening to Rudi Zygadlo had something to do with it…) and in the single "Run Quicker" (this time it's the "heroes of 2014" War On Drugs who find themselves shamelessly replicated). But that's certainly not enough to turn around the fortunes of a record that never takes off, one that lacks both a defined sonic identity and genuine personality. And, worst of all for a pop record, it lacks songs.

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24/01/2015