Random Review #52 Horse - Gods Home Movie

C4S4CD4 picked by @spurssimon check out his blog www.rumblesandgrumbles.com  for an intelligent take on current affairs and music and everything in-between.

Horse the band, or Horse the singer I think it’s both but I’m so vague about this I had to look it up. I remember having the debut Horse album (Same Sky) on cassette and really quite enjoying it at the time.  This CD has a sticker stating it’s a promotional copy and I have racked my brain as to where I got it. I think it was in a Second Hand record store that for a while had a load of CD’s either imports, Promos, or old stock for £1 per CD. I remember buying Joe Henry Trampoline (also a promo) as it was my first brush with his music and it was jaw droppingly good, and think I got this at the same time, this very statement says a lot about how much I have played this CD since that faithful day.

Horse arrived on the music scene around the time of Texas had broken through and I wonder if A&R men were trawling Edinburgh and Glasgow clubs looking for the next  Texas. And came up with Horse! They seemed to have threatened the lower reaches of the charts with singles from the first 2 albums and after that nothing, I had assumed that they had stopped recording but a quick check on Amazon shows that Horse is/are still releasing music and appear to have a bit of a cult following.

The music on this CD is very similar to early Texas, sweeping strong female vocals, acoustic and electric guitars high in the mix, rousing choruses and a sprinkling of sensitive ballads. What it lacks I guess is the charm of Sharleen Spiteri and over all the quality of the tunes just doesn’t match up to Texas (or others for that matter) A few of the tracks made me think this album was going to make me wonder why I haven’t listened to it in years but really the overall standard is just OK, and I found myself looking down at my IPod screen to see how many tracks were left o play. Celebrate, Shake The Mountain and God’s Home Movie open the album and are the best 3 tracks on the album after this it fades and melts into one big 30 minutes of nothingness. I’m sorry to say that but I have listening to this album twice and I’m struggling to remember any of the other tracks.

If you like Texas you might find something on here to like but really that’s like having non alcoholic lager when you could have an ice cold beer. You wouldn’t unless you had no choice!

Mark 5/10