"Fake cool image should be over," Mick Hucknall sings on the opening title track. Were he really going back home, this would be an album of frantic Beefheartian indie in the style of his first band, the Frantic Elevators. Sadly, even the modest adventure of his previous album Love And The Russian Winter is absent on this routine collection of by-the-book white-loaf soul. "Sunrise" makes less interesting use of its Hall & Oates/"I Can't Go For That" sample than De La Soul did on "Say No Go", while his version of The Stylistics' "You Make Me Feel Brand New" does grave injustice to Thom Bell's gorgeous original arrangement.
“Fake cool image should be over,” Mick Hucknall sings on the opening title track. Were he really going back home, this would be an album of frantic Beefheartian indie in the style of his first band, the Frantic Elevators. Sadly, even the modest adventure of his previous album Love And The Russian Winter is absent on this routine collection of by-the-book white-loaf soul. “Sunrise” makes less interesting use of its Hall & Oates/”I Can’t Go For That” sample than De La Soul did on “Say No Go”, while his version of The Stylistics’ “You Make Me Feel Brand New” does grave injustice to Thom Bell’s gorgeous original arrangement.
