The So So Glos : 'Tourism / Terrorism'
Released: 7th December 2009
Label: Green Owl Records
Their's is a inspiring story: Four Brooklyn-born brothers, by blood or marriage, united by a love for the Kinks and Elvis Costello, buy a derelict hotel and turn into a practise space/gig venue, get plucked from obscurity by prog-goth muppets And They Will Know Us By The Trail Of The Dead (although 40-year-old chin-stroking denim clad lameo might be more apt then dead - it would admittedly make a proposterously long name even longer) to support them on their UK tour.
The indregients are there right? This band should be ace! But they're not. They're really quite crap. Part of the New York garage scene which has produced prodigious underwhelmers The Virgins. The So So Glos, follow in the same twangy, telecaster, 4/4, palm-muted vein. The same vein that The Libertines tapped in 2002 and had mastered by 2004.
That isn't to say this album is completely devoid of charm - there are moments, however brief, that hint at some modicum of creativity, songs like 'Execution' and 'Love Or Empire' are okay. They shamble around in the same approachable way that Up The Bracket made so familiar.
But that's just the thing. It sounds like a scene that we all enjoyed, and will always have a place in our hearts, but that now, I'm glad is over - because it was, and still is being, pillaged by talentless try-hards. I mean, if you still long for another estuary of that Libertines, Others, river, that for me, ran dry some years ago, you'll probably enjoy this album. Don't get me wrong, there is none of the magic of 'Don't Look Back Into The Sun' or 'Stan Bowles' but it seems honest.
I loved The Libs as much as anyone - they got the British guitar music going again - but music should be progressive, these scenes belong to a moment in time - and should surely be let go once they've run out of steam.
And there are bands leading the way, showing where the garage scene should be going, White Denim, Black Lips and Titus Andronicus to name three incredible acts that have taken garage and dragged it forward in their own very separate ways.
I know The So Sos are American, but the NY and London scenes are so intertwined that it really can't be excused. And it's not like they're the exception either. Right now, they're the rule. New York hasn't produced a good band since Les Savy Fav. And what they have produced has been re-hashes and re-makes.
NY needs to up it's game - urgently.
Words: Oliver Jones
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