Razorlight

These hotly tipped Londoners are sloppier than Franz Ferdinand, not as sloppy as the Libertines, bitchier than the Strokes and more butch than the Killers. Which means they kind of get lost in the shuffle. Up All Night, the debut by the foursome, led by extravagantly braggadocian singer-guitarist Johnny Borrell,...

By Mikael Wood

November 25, 2004

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These hotly tipped Londoners are sloppier than Franz Ferdinand, not as sloppy as the Libertines, bitchier than the Strokes and more butch than the Killers. Which means they kind of get lost in the shuffle. Up All Night, the debut by the foursome, led by extravagantly braggadocian singer-guitarist Johnny Borrell, is fun when it dips into the same heady romance the Libs and the Strokes wallow in -- the weird triumphant feeling those bands can evince when singing about purchasing 40-ounce bottles of beer and being in bands that sing about purchasing 40-ounce bottles of beer. In the title track, a pintsize rush of trebly guitars and skip-stepping drums, Borrell makes throwing up in a toilet sound impossibly lovely; in "Golden Touch," he does the same for the kind of girl who's never alone, which is why "you leave a thousand messages on her phone." But elsewhere Razorlight does the sort of scruffy leather-jacket garage-pop you can get from dozens of other bands with more flavor and without Borrell's tiresome rhetorical grandstanding.

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