Wolfgang Parker - Room Nineteen

Heralding an impressive lengthy career, starchy-collared Wolfgang Parker and his loyal band of lemons have been giving it the large one, obstinately choosing to play an eclectic soup of 40’s swing jazz and punky rock ‘n’ roll for the past twelve years. They’ve apparently been attempting to create an entirely new sound never done before, attempting to break the barriers of what musical genre as an art form actually constitutes. Aren’t they bored yet?

Their third effort doesn’t leave you feeling cheap; this latest swing-fest being nineteen tracks of pithy rock ‘n’ roll. Why this album needs to be this long is not clear; perhaps they feel comfortable in that it reflects their mega-long, mergoo-ridden career playing chummy-swingy-jazz-rock-plop. Unless we’re all missing something, anybody who sings ‘tibbity-tabbity’ as a tag-line through a chorus and honestly believes it sounds cool needs tying to a tree and having wet, muddy footballs booted at them all night, surely?

Okay, so you cannot deny that it is original and a bit catchy from time to time and Wolfgang Parker does possess an interesting voice – but choose a night in strapped to a chair being forced to watch endless ‘Neighbours’ repeats (a la ‘A Clockwork Orange’), or a night out with these loons, and you might have a tricky choice. You’d also need the world’s most massive and most expensive industrial plunger to suck out any vague trace of attitude on this record - there’s simply no balls at all on these one dimensional crooners.

Anyone for heads ‘n’ volleys?


Verdict :

JIM BURT