“My smile is stuck. I cannot go back t’ yer Frownland. My spirit’s made up of the ocean and the sky n’ the sun n’ the moon n’ all my eye can see. I cannot go back to yer land of gloom where black jagged shadows remind me of the comin of doom”.
-Don Van Vliet

Before I started writing this review, my friend Allison asked me about Keep Calm And Carry On, specifically how I liked it. I told her I certainly did, to which she said, “Well that’s quite a compliment, you don’t really like anything”.

This is obviously not true, but what I think she meant was I don’t like anything like Stereophonics. Or so she subconsciously thought. In fairness to her, this is probably not the worst assumption in the world, as I remember I once nearly broke up with a girl who told me the Stone Roses Ten Storey Love Song might be her favourite tune of all time (semi-true story).

In fairness to me though, I do own Language.Sex.Violence.Other? and love the thing, so my adoration for Keep Calm And Carry On wasn’t as surprising as it might have been to the outside observer who doesn’t have access to my album collection, or parts of my body that are inked in homage to the group (untrue story).

The basic idea behind Keep Calm And Carry On is the concept that an ambulance can only go so fast. There will always be tragedies, and horrific behaviour that can’t be explained or justified, and the speed of life will nearly always eclipse the rescue missions all of us see as dependable mortality regulators, when their real function is a nimble security blanket. They’re swift enough to prove usefulness, but fail enough to assure a hell of a lot of inevitable helplessness.

This band is totally hip to the fleeting nature of life, and instead of celebrating this (which usually leads to excruciatingly laughable declarations of ferocity in the name of discontent or some shit) they simply ignore it. Basically, every moment on the album sounds like it was filmed on location.

Stereophonics seem to be stuck in perpetual limbo, trapped by some really stupid circumstances, but what makes Keep Calm And Carry On different is it’s no longer a complete act of faith to believe in their convictions, or even a conflict of interest. Here, finally we have escaped the somnambulistic lull we’ve been in since Language.Sex.Violence.Other? and we now walk with pride to the pub, even if we don’t know why!

I hate when people say shit like “this takes us back to a simpler time”, since no time was really simple. Just because a lot of people may have known their mailman’s name, and woke up to bottled milk on their front step, there was still a lot of the same despair, rejection, anxiety, self-doubt, neurosis, etc that we have today. They were just hidden better by a barrage of letterman jackets and poodle skirts. Having said that, Stereophonics don’t take us to a ‘simpler time’, but they do take us to a pleasant, unromanticised landscape, a perfect epitome of contemporary society seen through some pretty unassuming eyes.

The songs here don’t really have a point, but it works not because what they say to us, but instead we’re just pointed to certain areas where the monumentally significant and totally irrelevant are given equal rankings. It’s up to the listener to pick which they embrace, if at all, and this freedom is basically unrivalled in anything I’ve heard in the current music scene.

Look, this is trash music for a trashy culture, but the kick is: the anti-society has become the society (which probably makes someone like George Will a legitimate outlaw). Keep Calm And Carry On is the purest expression of pop-culture you will ever see, a completely distilled and unpolluted representation of everything in our day-to-day lives that give us those little moments of happiness we probably don’t even realise anymore.

When that is realised, how can one not absolutely fall in love with this record? The music is often broken down to a single moment, one that many will assume is overtly intimate, while others will proudly applaud the brazen honesty, when in truth it’s neither. Everything on here sounds like it was whipped up on the spot, and it’s pretty clear there is no room for anything remotely confessional when the theme of the hour seems to be the validity of cold perfection. No clumsy attempts at glory here, only gaiety.

Stereophonics let us into their dreams, and if we enter without any lucid aspirations, we’ll awake with a smile for the ages. I’m not gonna quote any of the lyrics in this review, because for the most part they strive to say nothing of value, but in a strange way, you’ll remember them. This is a testament to the enormous strength of these songs, and in turn, the lyrics become entirely personally significant.

The music on Keep Calm And Carry On doesn’t glide towards a triumphant finish, it soars the entire time. No tempo is even a smidge too fast or slow, nothing ever seems out of place, or overwhelming. There is absolutely nothing to consider or debate with this album, which will probably prove to be the major debate here. It exists on its own faultless terms, but this impenetrable prism will most likely be slagged by those who feel completely ripped off since there is indeed, not a challenging moment on the entire record.

Ah, let em bitch. Stereophonics have finally allowed themselves to release music from a sanctuary inside a blown up outside world, and since it’s artificiality is matched only by its raw perfection, it doesn’t really allow us to judge or tear it down like we normally would if there was even a glimpse of tangible reality reflected in this music.

Thus, I have no choice. I must give it a (near) perfect rating.

Picture by Aleksey.Const