Coast To Coast

Having won the vicious knife-and-broken-bottle fight that ensued among the hotpress’ crew (sorry about the eye, Olaf) in order to decide who would take this one on, I bring you Coast To Coast. Taa-daa!

Actually, me and Emily my niece are going to review this, since it’s aimed more at her than at me, methinks. I’ll give her half the money.

Overall it’s standard Westlife, romantic sugary ballads that boast of a sexless concept of love that actually exists in no other form of human endeavour except the US boyband genre. Because make no mistake about it, these Westlife boys are as American an outfit as R Kelly, Boys 2 Men and N’sync.

Epic production complements some fine vocal performances from the boys, (poor old Boyzone never even approached this level of polish), with a particularly neat line in vocal harmony. The surprise comes at track six, ‘When You Look Like That’, which owes much to Prince’s ‘When You Were Mine’ and is an excellent example of exactly what a pop single should be.

‘Dreams Come True’ is a slightly more funky up-tempo number, but most of the nineteen tracks (there’s a kinda cute one called ‘Don’t Get Me Wrong’ hidden at the end) are love ballads.

And while ‘You Make Me Feel’ is dangerously close to ‘When You Say Bugger All’ by Ronan, songs like ‘Puzzle Of My Heart’ are so cute I just can’t find it in my heart to slag them off.

Over to Emily. “Oi tink‘s reely reely brill.” Out of the mouths of babes? Maybe.