Earring Impaired
The Venue, Edinburgh
IF nothing else, it's one of the better conjuring tricks of the
age. Sleeper, as a musical entity, are resolutely standard issue, yet
are hailed as harbingers of a bright future. Louise Wener
(huh-huh, he said... etc-Ed), as a personality, though
certainly eloquent and witty, is pricipally known for the not
altogether traffic-stopping revelations that women enjoy sex and that
our major political parties rather test the patience of those who
think themselves radical, and yet has acquired a reputation for being
controversial.
This all fairly extraordinary, especially considering that Sleeper
are not, really. Tonight, they play a gig that could be sent on video
to far-off star systems as a definitive explanation of indie rock:
three anonymous blokes and one mildly charismatic woman play songs
with verses and choruses on guitars while bouncing up and down in
front of a similarly bouncing crowd of people wearing T-shirts
advertising the band or other bands like them and sweating a lot.
There are worse ways to spend on evening, and many, many worse bands
you could be watching while doing it, but this is not, all in all,
quite the giddying experience that watching the flower of a nation's
youth in bloom should be.
Sleeper were probably never going to be a revelation- they're too
blinkered, too unambitious, of which more shortly. But there's two or
three moments on "Smart", their otherwise unremarkable debut album,
that betray a raefied knack for an insidious melody and the guitar
riff that twists and buckles at not entirely expected angles.
"Inbetweener" is the one, of course, and it sounds just as great
tonight, Louise dropping her vowel endings with a diffident panache
happily reminiscent of the very great Wendy James. "Delicious",
likewise, has a tune that Kimberley Rew (uh, who?-Ed) wouldn't
have snorted at, and a spiralling guitar lead that recalls The
Darling Buds' sublime "Hit The Ground" sufficiently to redeem an
extremely silly lyric (am I the only one who thinks of Python's
"Nudge nudge... say no more" sketch?). Conversely, "Swallow",
features at least one eminently passable line ("That's no
lover/That's a vanity thief") and another difficult-to-dislodge
chorus.
Clearly then, there's the makings of a decent sort of pop group
here. The reason Sleeper arent's there yet, however, is due to their
regrettable happiness to settle for cheap sass over real substance.
Such cringworthy puns as "Lady Love Your Countryside" and "Alice In
Vain" suggest a band far too content to be judged only in terms of
their contemporaries, and to look no further for inspiration than the
hopelessly narrow boundaries of the indie rock sect. This is
point-scoring at its most pointless, and does Sleeper no favours,
condemning their work to the sort of shelf-life enjoyed by liquid
oxygen.
But... Sleeper are okay. Really. They've made an okay album, and
tonight they played an okay gig. What theyshould do now- what they
must do now, unless they'll be happy being back at college by
Christmas- is start thinking bigger, taking some chances. They're
pilfering from impeccable sources (Blondie, The Go-Go's, Belly, The
Breeders, Magazine, The Buzzcocks, The Kinks), but there's a
meekness, an ordinariness about them that reflects doubly badly at a
time when British pop has been reinvigorated by a resurgent larrikin
(uh what?- Ed) brashness. Sleeper's acts of petty subtle
theft, while deftly executed, look pretty shabby next to the audactiy
and glamour of the Great Tune Robberies perpetrated by Elastica and
Blur.
It seems a horribly unfair thing to aska band who've only just
released their first album, but in relatively bountiful times the
consumer is entitled to be impatient. So there it is, Sleeper: now
what?
ANDREW MUELLER