Max Collins and the boys return with their second full-length album, which unfortunately doesn’t quite live up to the bands quite excellent multi-million selling debut album.
Whereas ‘Eve 6’ was clever both sonically and lyrically, ‘Horroscope’ tries slightly too hard to follow-up their successes. Previously obsessed with all things of the fly variety, the band now seem smitten with everything animated. A Japanese anime girl adorns the sleeve, and the band are animated in their own cartoon action scene inside. Cartoons even manage to make their way into the lyrics, with references made to Jessica Rabbit (‘Rescue‘).
‘Rescue‘ and ‘On The Roof’ have weird electronica vibes to them, with Max Collins making use of a Cher style vocoder to vary his vocal chords. It works, but Collins is a good enough vocalist to not need the help of computers.
As upbeat as ever, the tempo throughout the album is perky without losing its well-known sound. US radio smash ‘Promise,’ is very Eve 6, and could quite easily have rubbed shoulders with any of the songs from the first CD. ‘Sunset Strip Bitch’ kicks off with keyboards and a heavy nu-metal style riff, before mellowing out slightly and sounding just like the Eve 6 of old.
Lyrically it is as clever as ever, but there are some ropey rhymes, including the cringe-worthy “amphetamines and jellybeans, she was pretty in her teens,” refrain that adorns ‘Amphetamines.”
It just lacks a certain something. Certainly not as consistent as before, some parts of some of the songs just aren’t that good. During ‘Enemy’ the song meanders until it hits a cracking chorus. ‘Jet Pack’ is another example of the song being really good in parts, and not so good in others.
Fans of the band will enjoy this, but it certainly is not as good as their critically acclaimed debut. Buy that first, then give this a listen. It’s not that bad, just try a little harder to not try to hard next time boys.
Paul Savage