Run away! Here comes more bad Scottish rock

By Michael Epstein
The Other White Meat

: While having a good beat at times, The Pastels' Up For a Bit With the Pastels offers little else in the way of music.

I really didn't want my first review to be a bad one, but thanks to Murphy's law, that's what I have to give. With rock groups like Teenage Fan Club and the Proclaimers coming out of Scotland, The Pastels didn't have much going for them to begin with. However, I decided to give them a chance because they are also from the United Kingdom, and I'm a big Brit pop fan. My mistake.

The first noticeable problem? The lead singer, Stephen McRobbie sounds like he's five feet from the mike. I even checked just to make sure the hollow sound wasn't coming from the stereo. No luck. In addition to the hollowness, Stephen also seems to suffer from a low, sad, and droning voice. In fact, it is his voice that ruins some the goods instrumentals; instrumentals that seem to be only part of The Pastels' music that isn't totally cursed.

It's actually makes some off the songs such as "Up For a Bit" and "Crawl Babies" bearable. Amazingly, I even found myself tapping in synch with the beat. Just to show that it wasn't all that bad though, I'd have to say that the last track, If I Could Tell You, was actually a fairly good, rueful ballad if (a pretty big if) you can tune out the lead singer.

All in all, most of the album sounds like a cross between warped 80s music and Raffi. And to think The Pastels were hailed as Glasglow's answer to Pavement. Uh-un, I'm gonna go with a no on that one. Maybe, just maybe, the next Scottish rock group I review will be better; if I review anymore Scottish rock.

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