I could just have first album syndrome

Given that I can’t find a video from The Research’s new album on YouTube at all, alongside its long gestation and their exit from EMI, I may be kicking a band while they’re down a little here.

I have to say, though, that I can’t remember the last time I was as nonplussed by a band’s new album as The Old Terminal. Plenty take their questionable turns (see Guillemots’ Red for a recent example) but none manage to so thoroughly and deliberately remove everything that previously made them stand out.

Breaking Up had songs, sure – no way it have could been so good without – but it was also a total triumph for a consistent, clever aesthetic that fitted exactly right. Its cheap keyboards, wobbly harmonies and miniature songs turned their weaknesses into strengths, lending an enormous immediacy that felt as if what Russell or Georgia were singing in their thin voices was too important to wait for anything more substantial. And when they sung of fragile relationships or lives that could fall apart at any moment you believed it because they sounded like they could, too.

So I go to listen to the new one and the first song goes from a familiar keyboard hum to a slowly strummed acoustic guitar, which over a drawn out build up is joined by a decently played electric and drums and strings. I presume that it’s a bit of a ‘look what we can do now’. No-one wants to be boxed into that small an identity after all. And it’s definitely The Research. Look at the references to Piney Gir and all. Except, of course, that it’s not a one off but a sign of what’s to come. Every song is just as competent and layered and sounds like it could be by any number of different bands. Russell is now the only singer for the vast majority. All bar two are longer than three minutes even!

Which is not even to say that they are bad as such, cos their songwriting ability has not deserted them and there’s some great touches in there, especially in “All My Love” which has the best sadly wheezing brass since early Badly Drawn Boy. Just that the spectre of individuality lost hangs over The Old Terminal to such an extent that it would surely be better to listen without having ever heard them before.