Review of A's CD "Something's Going On"

A: Something's Going On

When the Britpop phenomenon began to die, a drunken conversation at the Good Mixer in the over-hyped Camden Town resulted in the legendary birth of Britrock; a few bands were located for championing in the NME and a few more emerged from the woodwork. One such band was A: a bit crap live, featuring futile warbling, a lack of melody and simply too heavy for an audience still longing for pretty, anorexic white boys with guitars. They were the perfect advert for the media-manufactured Britrock scene. Then A kind of disappeared and only the real fans paid any attention to them, although their follow up album Monkey Kong was afforded 'album of the year' by a few hacks and generally overlooked by others. While The Kids went for hoodies, A went for golf visors but eventually, after a few years of bewildered confusion they discovered what kids of the 21st Century were after. A smashing album called Hi-Fi Serious saw the release of a nu-metal number, just to test the water, and then a couple of melodic, pop-punk Feeder-style numbers which the sceptics amongst us couldn't help but think was a shit sell-out, but equally well marketed in a dumb-ass high school punk Sum 41 / Blink 182 world. Which brings me to Something Going On, which is a reinvented A doing what A now do best. Poppy guitars. Catchy vocals too, and although they may now sound like tens of other bands, at least they are no longer crap. So lest we forget that silly little Britrock fiasco, and rejoice as a now radio-friendly A emerge from the media mire...

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