Chubb Rock?

I'm in a terrible mood tonight. Not that that's your fault, of course, but all the same, I'll keep my mouth shut & get on with the archival shit.


THE KEYZ – SUPERSTAR GAZING (demo)


At first sight we hated this CD – a combination of the cover, which looks like a nineteenth century consumptive has coughed blood all over a Turner tea towel, and that ugly crass Z in the name turned our stomachs. Almost immediately, we opened Nightshift to discover that this Banbury band has won a juicy £15, 000 to spend on recording through www.slicethepie.com. Interest is immediately piqued; it has to be worth hearing, if they’re flying the local flag so successfully. It’s a crying shame, then, that we hate it just as much after playing the bloody thing.

It opens intriguingly enough, “Monkeyfish” wafting out a highly polished guitar swirl that could be from some mid 80s Eric Clapton LP, primed to explode into vastly expensive, sleek pomp rock and supersized blues. Tragically, it just flops into a puddle of laddish ska punk instead. It’s not the worst ska punk we’ve ever heard by a long chalk (it’s a pretty benighted genre, let’s be honest), but it doesn’t have much to say, and even less in the way of character. Apart from sending us scuttling to dig out Twizz Twangle’s evergreen “Monkey Dog”, there’s no real reason for this song to exist on record. Live, maybe; a few beers, a loud enough PA, a frustrating failure to cop off, could all make this third hand bounce sound enticing, but a well played yet vapid studio performance has leeched any tiny fragment of life it may have had.

The next tune starts with the line, “Have I told you about my mate Jack?” Now, perhaps there are some lyricists who could make something of that woefully underpowered salvo: Suggs in his classic era, maybe, or The Small Faces, or perhaps even Mike Skinner, on a good day. But The Keyz are none of these, and this pedestrian opener simply illustrates that The Keyz are a band who have never had an idea of their own – and if they have they’ve quickly covered it up with a guitar overdub lest anyone should point and laugh at them for standing out from the cold grey crowd. Only some fluent piano lines gracefully swooping at the fringes can raise this song from a million others.

At this point we begin to worry that we’re being unfair to a perfectly able band, but the last two tracks take the EP on a shocking downward curve: “Them & Me” starts with the sound of the Bernie Inn pianist having a crack at Michael Nyman, before swamping even that in faceless mid-tempo mush, whilst the title track is like an anodyne advert for life assurance that goes on for over six minutes. We appreciate we sound jealous of The Keyz – and fuck it, we are! Fifteen grand would be appreciated at any time, and we’d be especially chuffed if we were given it for being the best at being average. Of course, they presumably won the prize – voted for blind by the public, I might add, so it’s all above board, unlike many another battle of the bands scam – because they can play. And they can, they can play just fine, so long as your criteria for “fine” don’t stretch beyond the ability to keep in time and balance your volume levels. The Keyz are better than many a band chugging away in the provinces, but a classical musician playing with this little flair and attention would have trouble getting a gig at the WI.

But, hell, if being able to perform the basics of music, without the necessity to come up with anything that demands performance is what you desire, here’s The Keyz. If you fancy awarding the Booker Prize to the writer who can spell the best, knock yourself out. If you want to give Michelin stars to any chef who can prepare food to the basic requirements of the human digestive system, go ahead…but be aware that some of us won’t be joining you in this brave new world without a serious fight.