Once Upon A Time In The West - Hard-Fi

I doubt I'll be surprising any regular readers of this site when I tell you that I hate Hard-Fi. Actually that might be a bit harsh. Truth be told they have done a couple of half decent songs which don't see me wishing death on the band every time I hear them. The problem is the band themselves. Rightly or wrongly, and there is the chance that they are great blokes, every time I see them, be it performing a song or doing an interview my first thought is "what a bunch of tossers".

So there. I am going to be biased in this review because I don't like them.

But by the same token I'm not going to totally dismiss them because of that, nor just because the whole "No Cover Art" thing is the biggest load of bollocks since Vinnie Jones' spoken word intro on the last Joss Stone album.

Occasionally there is something akin to genuine emotion on the album and it's at those times that Hard-Fi are almost likable. One example is Help Me Please, written in response to the death of Richard Archer's mother; it's perhaps not a typical Hard-Fi song, which probably explains part of it's appeal.

But really for the most part it's one of those records where I sit there and find myself thinking "what's the fuss?". It's relatively catchy and will sell by the bucketload, but that doesn't make it an astounding piece of work. I'm bored with it now, Christ knows how I'll feel in 12 months time once the radio has played the singles to death.