Tal Bachman whiffs of cheese. His lazily titled album: Tal Bachman is replete with melancholic dirges studded with Tears for Fears style sighs and consummated with gravely voiced anthemic choruses. The opening track Darker Side of Blue would befit the soundtrack to many of those eighties American B movies about middle class romance and heartbreak. The second track on the album, She's So High could be taken for the quintessential radio friendly indie tune. It lacks substance but has a chorus which is as catchy as Freshers Flu and provides an irresistible imperative to join in. This tune signals the moment at which the corporate trans-whore-mation of indie was truly completed. The rest of the tracks on the album are fairly listless, running on a slop of reconstituted eighties pop mediocrity. With song titles like Romanticide, You're My Everything and You Love Like Nobody Loves Me Bachman exhibits a flair for rubric and lyrical composition bettered only by Bryan Adams and Cliff Richards. This album is vomit inducing and empty of any practical significance to twentieth century living, (although some would argue that it's existence says a lot about our sorry state).

Mike Williams