THE CRIBS the cribs

I never did quite get The Cribs. Even when Johnny Marr joined them recently, they just didn't 

grab me. Below is my review of their debut LP and I still stand by everything I wrote back then... 

British trio The Cribs are the latest hopefuls to come off the seemingly 
endless new rock conveyor belt. In order to deliver their debut album 
they've put down pretty much every song they've written so far. This makes 
for a pretty varied 30-odd minutes to say the least.

On the one hand there's the brilliant pop of 'You Were Always The One' and 
'The Lights Went Out' and on the other there is the almost unlistenable 
'Third Outing' and 'The Watch Trick'. In between these two extremes there's 
also a fair dollop of fillers too such as 'Baby Don't Sweat' (which just 
kinda staggers about aimlessly) and 'Another Number' (which is half baked 
and half arsed in equal measure).

It's all very frustrating because they clearly have the ability to write 
really infectious indie pop tunes. 'You Were Always The One' and 'The Lights 
Went Out' aren't revoluntionary but they're made for the dance floor in the 
same way The Strokes and Franz Ferdinand are.

There's just a complete lack of quality control though. The album starts off 
sounding like a drunken Nick Cave crawling in the gutter and ends sounding 
like a jam where everyone's just lost interest, and that's exactly how I 
felt by then as well. 

If The Cribs was a tennis player it would be Tim Henman: brilliant in 
flashes but too inconsistent to ever win a major prize.
 
By Andy McLean. Copyright held by author.

First published in The Brag, Sydney, 2004.

The Cribs is available through FM Records.