Cut loose from the mooring of a unifying concept, This Machine is a series of unrelated pop songs, disparate in sound and spirit, and marred by some real clangers. ‘Enjoy Yourself’ shoots for anthemic slam-dunk but bounces awkwardly off the hoop and boing-boings around pointlessly, unaided by an ill-advised kazoo, and pleading you to press ‘skip’.
On the flipside, when standout tracks ‘The Autumn Carnival’ and ‘Slide’ gear back down into the drowsy shoegaze the Dandys drove in on with 1995’s game-changing Dandys Rule OK, things improve markedly. These two songs aside, though, you can’t help but wonder: does pop need a band like the Dandys, capable of so much, cramming yet more material into its bloated back-catalogue?
[rating:2]
***
