Selling a Vibe might just have you believe that it is still 2006, that the popular indie music of the era is that timeless. It really isn’t – take it from me, somebody that loved a lot of it when it was current. Nothing is more of-the-time than what many disapprovers categorise as ‘landfill indie’, not even grunge. It’s weird to think that there was a cultural music boom in the UK in the 2000s, especially a rock boom, our pretty boy equivalent of American hard rock and the ensuing eyeliner emo movement, with much less lasting appeal. It was very much the ‘Simon Amstell hosting Never Mind the Buzzcocks’ era of rock music in the UK, a show that Ryan Jarman – guitar/co-lead vocalist of The Cribs – was actually very funny on.
For All My Sisters – The Cribs’ 2015 album – clung to nostalgia like somebody with tiny arms trying their best to win at tug of war. It was fairly pleasant nostalgia – see the fervent heart-screech of Summer of Chances, as if transporting you back to the bittersweet-est of summers – and Selling a Vibe has the same intentions over a decade later. This album, the band’s ninth, is far more desirous where capturing a nostalgia for the pop relevance of 2000s UK indie rock is concerned, whereas For All My Sisters just sounded nostalgic on an emotional level. This leads to a few setbacks that never really hampered the Jarman brothers in their earlier days, but did hamper a number of other bands, including a lack of care going into pop production (see how the bass overpowers on Summer Seizures), which drifts in and out of unimportance anyway – nothing cerebral about any of the production, though at least it isn’t terribly watered-down other than Brothers Won’t Break’s glossy guitars. Nostalgia also leads to a few songs sounding like maudlin, doldrum attempts to recapture a previous a life, many of which are totally riskless – the operatic vocal inclusions on You’ll Tell Me Anything actually do apply a risk, but the chorus is so painted-on cool that it might just be one of the band’s weakest; a back-and-forth between the two singing brothers (Gary and Ryan), so aloof on Ryan’s part that it sounds like the musical equivalent of wearing sunglasses indoors. Hearing a band so aloof about such riskless music is a bit of a pet peeve of mine, worsened by the unlistenable flat notes of Looking For the Wrong Guy.
Do any of these songs capture the nostalgia of For All My Sisters? The wispy atmosphere of Distractions, presented primarily by effective, dizzying vocal harmonies, does, and the hearty chorus of A Point Too Hard to Make makes a case for itself, akin to the roar of Men’s Needs or something similar. There’s some solid guitar work on this album too; a classic indie high-end on Never the Same, like The Libertines with a little more amplification. Maybe that’s the best example? You know you’re forcefully hunting for points of interest when all you can muster for the title track is “the second chord of the main riff is pretty cool”.
The Cribs were one of the better bands to plague the airwaves with photogenic man-feelings back in the 2000s – they made a few decently impressive earthquakes for a band with only three members – but Selling a Vibe would denote them another one for the pile had it been released twenty years ago.
Best track – A Point Too Hard to Make.
Worst track – You’ll Tell Me Anything.
Rating – 5 out of 10
