Often so dull as to be mesmerising, Paper Tigers is the kind of album you’d rather not write about at all; the 30 seconds it takes to glance through a review is 30 more than the music under discussion deserves. Here’s a hint, so you can get on with your lives: the claim goes that Caesars are “A garage band for the digital age”.
How novel; how necessary.
It’s not that Caesars are spectacularly bad, but their linear, melodically obvious, cleanly-produced would-be anthems are so by-rote that they could be by anyone, from anywhere. They’re also derivative, and if there’s fun to be had it’s in figuring out who ‘inspired’ each song. The Doors, The Beach Boys, Neil Young and The Wannadies for starters.
The reason we’re hearing about Caesars now, four albums into their career, is because ‘Jerk It Out’, their aggravating single, is selling iPods. That the song is lifted either from Herman’s Hermits or Manfred Mann’s Earth Band (I can’t decide) is not irrelevant. There was a time when playing high-energy garage songs in the style of the '60s British invasion was a good idea, but that time was 1990-2004, when Guided By Voices were doing it. The opening half of Paper Tigers (‘Spirit’, ‘Out There’, ‘My Heart is Breaking Down’, ‘Paper Tigers’) owes its life to Robert Pollard’s legendary band of Ohioans, though Caesars have none of GBV’s wit and abandon. The point being: when an international ad agency just knows you’re the hotline they’ve been waiting for to the heart of the kids, it’s all over. Two words: Stilt. Skin.