The View - New Single

I am ratcheting down my enthusiasm for this new single -- is a new album due already? -- from The View due to the lesson I learned from their first album: two tremendous singles do not necessarily result in a great album.

(Not there's anything wrong with being a great singles band, though; it worked for The Smashing Pumpkins and The Bluetones.)

But that opening Oasis-by-way-of-Scotland hook and the various Libertines-isms are infectious!

Songs like this -- especially with a video like this -- have a weird sort of power; they make it seem, if for only 3 or 4 minutes, that things are right with the world -- the inner 18-year-old is alive again and the car stereo is blaring. Only the United Kingdom can produce music like this -- Scotland in this instance -- and this kind of single is the equivalent for me of American Top 40 AM radio in the 1970's.

The single is king and the perfect 4 minute pop song is the land's highest art form.

So what if the albums are never as good as the lead-off singles, eh?


The View - "5Rebbeccas"