Search - Models :: Local And/Or General

Great songs, unevenly presented

humanresistor | Taipei, Taiwan | 09/17/2002

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I think the most pertinent fact in the creation of "Local And/Or General" is that soon after the group arrived in England to make the album, the singer Sean Kelly walked into a glass door and had severe concussion. The album does sort of have a concussed feel to it.The basic material in "Local And/Or General" is very good and very varied - the styles range from screechy guitar rock ("Local And/Or General") to very lightweight pop ("Unhappy") taking in weird electronic sounds and quasi- (extremely quasi-) reggae ("Rates of Change", which is actually a version of their early "Progressive Office Pools") on the way. The songs themselves are slightly less oblique and abstract than on "Cut Lunch", which is an advantage for a full-length album.So, there are some very strong tracks here; the title track must be one of the best songs the Models ever did, "Tearing Hair Out" and "Bantam Had" juxtapose gruesome subject matter with bouncy catchy tunes, and the admittedly very simple joke of "Truth About Truth About Scientists" is presented with panache and kept brief.What this album lacks is structure and atmosphere. "Alphabravocharliedeltaechofoxtrotgolf" and "Cut Lunch" demonstrated that the Models had a inherent talent for creating slightly warped versions of conventional pop songs that were still appealing, brief and catchy. They tried to do this again on "Local And/Or General" and failed. Many of the songs are good ideas that are presented confusingly or flatly. For example, compare the version of "Man O' Action" here with the one on "Cut Lunch". It's ridiculously over-produced, with a Nick Launay type "big drum sound" that just sounds stupid, an awful guitar riff is added, and it's still about ten times more boring than the original! And like other songs on the album, the screechy trebly sound means that the bass & drums don't really drive the songs - in the bits without singing, the songs meander along doing nothing."Local And/Or General" is certainly worth buying. You'll have to imagine that there's better production and snappier songs, though."