Hmmm. Higgins++ is actually just Andy Higgins‘, of Erase Today fame, vocals and guitars. There are no drums, no bass, nothing. Just a guitar. It sounds like it could work, but it doesn’t. The resulting effect is that this record sounds flatter than a pancake which has been squashed by a heavy roller. I guess there is an element of Billy Bragg here, if he ditched his current image and went all ’77 on us, but that doesn’t mean Higgins++ is actually any good.
From the opening ‘Intro’, made up of fake commercials, there is a theme throughout of greed, commercialisation and a bizarre obsession with introducing each track with an advert. Again, an interesting concept, but one which would work far better with a full band. The songs themselves are okay, but the lyrics are cringe-worthy at times – “All the record stores in this town are closed down, thank you Virgin, thank you HMV, for taking them away,†Mr Higgins croons, which does nothing for me personally. The better songs have a more political slant, with ‘Am I Listening?’ arguably the best track here.
This is one of the strangest CDs we’ve been sent in a long time, and to be fair it’s not my thing at all. There’s no doubt in my mind it would be a lot better with a full band, but thumbs up, I guess, for at least trying to do something different…
www.jsntgm.com
Paul