Bad Boys Two Odeon Friday 10-Thursday 16 October What you have to remember about this sequel is that is was inevitably going to be made , since the first film earned (to employ the language of Will Smith’s character, the irrepressible Mike Lowrey) “a huge fucking pile of dough” for Jerry Bruckheimer, the producer, and all others involved. So after this long wait of eight years, what are we left with? A dazzling cinematic display, with some skilful camera direction by director Michael Bay, including a jaw-dropping car chase to rival anything from The Matrix Reloaded, as well as an original continuous circling sequence of Smith and Lawrence in a shootout with some Jamaican yardies, plus a pretty sketchy plot involving a crazed cuban drug lord, the Miami PD, the DEA, FBI, CIA (anybody beginning to notice a Bruckheimer theme?) and about $150 million dollars of Dutch Ecstasy. The two leads bicker incessantly, and while at times the wisecracks are witty, the constant “getchur black ass outta my face nigger” becomes tiresome. An improbable chase out to the Caribbean, total destruction of Miami city centre, and the littering of the streets with morgue corpses is a tad too much even for the Bad Boys and after two and a half hours the ugly morality and misogyny of this film becomes tedious.ARCHIVE: 0th Week MT2003 

The Chemical Brothers are clever men. Despite the history degrees. They’ve been waving glow-sticks long enough to warrant this ten-year retrospective, holding the limelight as their more artful cohorts drifted back into the dance Underworld. The secret of their continued success: celebrity mates. By borrowing the recognition factor of rock vocalists, the Chemicals extend their reach outside the dance aisle of HMV. ‘Setting Sun’, still their best track, relies more upon Noel Gallagher’s voice and lyrics than on the horde of air-raid sirens that he is trying to mend. Similarly, the new single, ‘The Golden Path’, would be nothing special without Wayne Coyne’s hippyfied rewrite of the lyrics to Tenacious D’s ‘Tribute’. On ‘Out of Control’, Bernard Sumner slips easily back into his flat-voiced role, whilst his hosts pay homage to New Order so openly that, were Sumner not involved, someone’d end up in court. ‘Let Forever Be’ is similarly derivative, sounding like the Beatles, sitting in a curry house, watching Ringo have an epileptic fit behind a drum kit. Not to say this is bad; just that it occasionally feels like the dancing-up of guitar records you already own. Still, ‘The Private Psychedelic Reel’ proves that the Brothers can do hard dance without breaking a sweat. The only real problem is the apparent lack of development in the music; why haven’t the Brothers taken more advantage of advances in shiny new guitar technology? Expect another album like this in 2013. Vocals aside, it’ll probably sound the same, but that’s no bad thing.ARCHIVE: 0th Week MT2003 

Iggy Pop: Skull Ring Out now Iggy Pop’s first recording in years, unashamedly superb, being packed with the original beauty of rock. Greenday helped out, and though the opening three songs don’t showcase their input, the vitriol I was ready to berate them with turned to amazement. Opener ‘Little Electric Chair’ reeks of ‘White Light / White Heat’, and I’m too young to remember who sounded like this first, Iggy or Bowie, but Skull Ring is like a tour through all that was, and is, good in rock. The end result? Fucking good. Skull Ring keeps its momentum for sixteen tracks as well, which is no mean feat. There’s a definite nod towards the White Stripes et al, which is to be expected in the current climate but the haunting semi-camp vocals of Iggy Pop remind you that he did all this before the ice age and still knows where the sweet spot is. Age certainly comes before beauty in the production of this first rate rock album.ARCHIVE: 0th Week MT2003 

The Webb Brothers: Webb Brothers Out now The third album from the Chicago born Webb Brothers, sons of the famous 60s singer/songwriter, brings together all the threads of musical originality exhibited in their first two albums. Self-produced by the three siblings Justin, Christiaan and James under 679 Recordings, home of The Streets and discoverers of the Polyphonic Spree, the eponymously titled new album is unashamedly home-grown. Songs like ‘A Funny Ol’Kind of Music’ and ‘Heaven Never Letting Me In’ show off the band’s own brand of wit and jollity. The melodies, beats and generally noviced tone of the album are typical of the likes of The Strokes, The Doves and perhaps even creeps towards the sound of The Thrills. Even the sickeningly named ‘Who Wants To Get High’ survives its unfortunate moniker thanks to its confidence and freshness. The current single, ‘Ms Moriaty’, also impresses, exemplifying the ease with which the Webb Brothers make near perfect pop music. Definitely a vast improvement on their amateurish last album, Maroon.ARCHIVE: 0th Week MT2003 

S Club 8: Sundown Out now Formerly known as S Club Juniors; like S Club 7, but with a higher ratio of girls to boys, and without a fat one who secretly wants to be in a nu-metal band, S Club are back. Their record company seem to have decided it’s alright for them to record a song about going out on a Friday night, complete with a bit where two of them sing a duet which hints that they might be having their first tentative fumbles in a burnt-out Ford Focus. The song’s fine, but it has great potential for the disruption of society; it’s also very attractive material for lazy Entz reps. Don’t bother buying this, you’ll be hearing it every weekend until your JCR stumps up for a new set of CDs, some time in 2009.ARCHIVE: 0th Week MT2003 

Turin Brakes: 5 Miles Out now The Proclaimers, once wrote a song called ‘500 Miles’. Simple mathematics shows us that it was approximately 100 times better than this. There’s a line in this about “jet planes flying too close to the ground”; it makes you wish they’d fly a little lower. Take David Gray’s worst song, remove all the charm and it’s still better than this. Turin Brakes isn’t an anagram of “tonedeaf pig-buggering fucktards”, but it should be. Didn’t really like this one tiny bit.ARCHIVE: 0th Week MT2003 

Blur: Good Song Out now Despite naming this song to preclude negative reviews, you can’t not like this. It’s very simple. A gentle, shuffling beat, with the rudimentary acoustic guitars, floating over the top of a bassline that sounds like ‘Walk on the Wild Side’s much happier brother. A few keyboards come in later, but really, this goes to show that Blur’s new, shambling persona is to be welcomed with open arms. The voice is the voice of a man who’s been out on the razz, and woken up with no real memories of the night before, just a general feeling of calm contentment. It’s certainly worth a few quid.ARCHIVE: 0th Week MT2003 

The Coral: Secret Kiss To be released You should admire The Coral. For one thing, they’re from Liverpool. It must’ve taken time to nick that many guitars and build a drum kit from purloined hubcaps. They’ve also managed to persuade the Great British Public that they’re possessed of an eclectic musical genius by being slightly wacky and spouting the brand of Scouse mysticism that made George Harrison so annoying. This sounds a bit like Jerry and the Pacemakers playing the music from a French spy film. For a Liverpudlian band they ain’t bad.ARCHIVE: 0th Week MT2003 

Gareth Gates: Sunshine Out Now Yes, we’re discussing Gareth Gates. Stop whinging and listen to those who know. Okay, it’s unfortunate that the first single from his new album is slightly mouldy cheese, rather than the divine slice of pop that was ’Any One Of Us’. And that ’Sunshine’ comes out as it starts pissing it down. But Gareth remains our premier pop idol, reducing popstarry- eyed 22-year-olds to shrieks and tears with a single, vulnerably quivering note. Gareth’s star quality makes him our finest popster since Take That, and the fact that I can’t remember a note of this song is utterly irrelevant.ARCHIVE: 0th Week MT2003 

This isn’t a concert”, bellows Andrew WK halfway through his set, “This is a party!” “This” also has all the hallmarks of unadulterated twatrock – prepubescent fans trying their best to look over 14 or risk a lifetime’s Zodiac ejection. But it’s not. WK himself is so very polite: “You’re not like an audience,” he tells us at one point. “You’re like my family.” He sprinkles us with Evian instead of effluence, and thanks us profusely for our “most gracious welcome.” It’s been two long years since ‘I Get Wet’ and the joys of ‘Party Til you Puke’. ‘Got to Do It’ may have been eclipsed by ‘Born to Do It’ in Avid Merrion’s books, but Andrew WK has managed to hang on to his ‘Real Fans’ – who, in the meantime, have endured and survived puberty. As a tribute to their lost innocence, he sticks to what we know best, playing what the audience wants in the order it wants it – from the romance of ‘She is Beautiful’ to the climax of the night, ‘Party Hard’. He introduces only a couple of songs from the new album, The Wolf; and although ‘Never Let Down’ shows no rebate in the impacted spinal mosh trauma, lines like “I don’t wanna make love I just wanna make sex” are disappointing when matched with the old stuff. Second disappointment of the night: the scallies are perturbed by the appearance of three men in tight, white vests, and their leechlike fixation to the tour bus. Even the microdresses get the hint and go home, wondering why the penny never dropped with the Evian. “His hair’s not even greasy,” says one. They wander off, to drown their sorrows on Oxford Romance. Partying Hard just doesn’t seem so appealing anymore.ARCHIVE: 0th Week MT2003