Cazals - What Of Our Future

Oh. Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.

Hopes weren’t high for this album after recent single, ‘Somebody, Somewhere’ failed to impress. At least we can congratulate Cazals on being able to pick their singles well, as that’s the strongest track on the record. That’s all the praise we can muster.

‘What Of Our Future’ was meant to be a reinvention. No longer indie-rock-by-numbers, so they said. But superfluous synth does not a good album make. The question, in short, is: why? This is lad-rock made entirely disingenuous by pretension. ‘Comfortable Silence’ is anything but, sounding like someone left a broken photocopier in the corner during recording. One of the members seems to have decided playing Super Mario Tennis on their NES in the studio was preferable to actually playing any instruments on ‘Control OSS-117’, and this charade of forward-thinking goes on throughout the record.

Even the lyrics here offer no respite from the cavalcade of utter shite. ‘I’ve got something to say/Just in a matter of time’ is offered as a lyric on ‘Poor Innocent Boys’. If this band has anything – anything at all; even one incisive or witty comment - to say, it’s not exhibited here. ‘Life is boring/can’t stand getting up in the morning’? Did Richard Archer write this as part of his junior school creative writing lessons?

Luckily they’ve managed to implicate as few people as possible in this black hole of a record, producing and managing themselves. One suspects they’ve never heard of Black Flag, but their DIY ethos at least means the blame for this turgid heap can be placed squarely on their own shoulders – not that hired help would have been able to solve the dearth of musical and lyrical innovation on show here. Please, for everyone’s sake Cazals, just stop.