Orphan Boy - Pain, Passion & Loyalty

Orphan Boy are hacked off. They’re inevitably a grumpy trio anyway, hailing from the bright lights of Grimsby, but what has really grated on them the last few years is the pigeonhole they’ve been thrown into as a result of choosing Manchester as their adopted hometown. That said, they don’t do themselves any favours by blazing into Passion, Pain & Loyalty, their second studio offering, with a riff that to any godforsaken weirdo who isn’t too au fait with their Britpop could easily be mistaken for the Gallagher household’s ‘Rock & Roll Star’ or ‘The Shock of the Lightning’.

If you’re to believe the band’s quote-splattered website bio, they would not be in the least happy to be reading this, especially coming from a fellow northerner who should really know better. They’re a bitter bunch, sick to death of Oasis and the Stone Roses, ready to prove that they, and Manchester for that matter, have got something a bit different to the masses. I’d love to stand with them. I really would. They’re a rock solid young band, but I just can’t bring myself to agree with their press spiel on this particular issue.

Just for the record, I do not think Passion… is a bad album. It’s much more mature and varied than their 2008 debut Shop Local; they’ve learnt what a piano is, realised that “fast” and “quite fast” aren’t the only two possible tempos, and even thrown in some healthy harmonica on one track for good measure. All in all, it’s a pretty damn good album, and I wouldn’t discourage anyone from investing a few bob of their not-so-hard earned loan in it. But don’t, just don’t, expect to find something earth shatteringly original or your new favourite band with it.

Following opener ‘Letter for Annie’, we have 3 consecutive songs that I can’t pick any faults in; ‘Popsong’ should keep anyone who likes deriding the state of the music industry with the subtlety of an egg to the face happy, ‘Harbour Lights’ is a perfectly palatable piece of jangly nostalgia, followed by what for me, is the standout track on the record, ‘Remember’.

But dear Lord, we then hit track five. You can blatantly hear it was written as a single, and it suffers for it - yelped, double-tracked vocals and cringe worthy attempt at a guitar solo. Once he’s finished playing Ricky Wilson, frontman Rob Cross soon hits back on ‘Anderson Shelter Blues’, half way through which he begins the venomous sort of monologue Jarvis Cocker used to treat us to back in the days of Pulp at their peak. Hats off to him, he does sound a dead ringer for the godfather or Indie himself at this point, but to me it just seems like the sort of stunt that should be left alone in the mid-nineties where it belongs.

Ranting aside, however, Orphan Boy have raised their game considerably with Passion…. They haven’t run out of ideas for the second album and defaulted to writing about sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, and neither have they tried to get deep and be the people’s poets before the people are quite ready to take them into their hearts. They’ve gone for a simple, reminiscing and undeniably British trip down memory lane. And overall it works.

★★★

Add Comment

You must log in to submit a comment.