For the uninitiated, Calvin Harris is the young Dumfries DJ/producer/vocalist and former Marks & Sparks shelf stacker who ascended from his bedroom to the big time in 2007 with the release of the modestly titled party-fest I Created Disco. Although he’d been making and releasing unsuccessful dance records since the age of 15 (producing them on an old Amiga), the quirkily inventive and indie-sounding Disco sold more than 100,000 copies in the UK alone and earned him comparisons with the likes of LCD Soundsystem.
Now that he’s made it big (having worked successfully with Kylie and Dizzie Rascal, last year he reportedly passed on the chance to remix Lady GaGa), his intention is obviously to leave the lo-fi indie sensibilities behind and make the music bigger sounding. As he told a dance magazine midway through the recording of Ready For The Weekend, “What I’m into at the moment is the idea of stadium dance. Playing football stadiums with massive riffs, big hands-in-the-air rave anthems. The whole ‘minimal’ thing has passed, for me.”
Not to castigate the lad for such unbridled ambition, but the idea of a football stadium full of ravers leaves this writer cold. After all, to create such a crowd-pleasing record would surely necessitate swapping depth and subtlety for big beat populist banality. Bigger doesn’t mean better, and quality will surely suffer when you go after quantity.
And so it proves here. Although well executed, for the most part, Ready For the Weekend is the electro-pop soundtrack to a hairdresser’s budget holiday in Ibiza. In the ‘90s. This is not a 21st century-sounding piece of work. It’s big, phat, squelchy, bleepy, chirpy, brainless and largely forgettable. Hands-in-the-air-handbags-on-the-floor opening track ‘The Rain’ pretty much sums up this album’s intentions with its repeated refrain of, “These are the good times in your life/ So put on a smile and it’ll be alright.”
Of course, somewhat unusually for a DJ/producer, Harris also sings, and the more song-orientated tracks are among the best here. Lyrically he’s not the most poetic – “I’ve got to stop waiting for you/ And move onto something new /But everything around me is blue/ The colour that reminds me of you” – but it’s the way he sings ‘em, before building up the background house beats and turning the euphoria up to ‘11’. The only problem is that this kind of stuff has been done before and far better.
Some of the instrumentals, particularly album closer ‘5iliconeator’, are atmospheric slices of comedown ambience that hint at hidden depths, but ultimately while this album may be ready for the weekend, you’ll have forgotten all about it by Monday afternoon. Then again, with inane song titles such as ‘Dance Wiv Me’, that could well be the point.