28/07/00 - the guardian

Pop CD of the week

Don't let them off the leash

What the Animalhouse really need, writes Dave Simpson, is someone to lay down the law

The Animalhouse

Ready to Receive (Boilerhouse/Arista)

*** (out of 5)

Pop stardom can do funny things to a psyche. Ten years ago Mark Gardener was the very public pout of Creation's pre-Oasis darlings, Ride. Few - Gardener's increasingly disgruntled guitarist colleague Andy Bell included - were left in any doubt as to who led the band. Now, Bell holds down the bass slot in Oasis and Gardener is back in the Animalhouse.

Bizarrely, he's also making noises about the band being a "democracy": an exciting collaboration of five individuals with their own creative ideas. A fabulous notion in principle, but the last time a star underwent this level of ego reduction it was David Bowie, subsuming himself to Tin Machine, and we all know what happened there.

Ready to Receive is certainly no debacle, but nor is it quite the triumph Gardener was dreaming up when he left the fracturing Ride three years ago to "find himself" in New York. In fact, Gardener's notion of a democracy is bringing the band down: what is fine and desirable in society is problematic in pop.

Take the title track. It starts off as a Kraftwerk-style synth squiggle, erupts into Charlatans-esque psychedelic rock, and suddenly segues into something almost from Pet Sounds. A moment of minor wonder is destroyed after five seconds when they're off again, into Devo/Roxy Music territory. Always Be samples Bowie (Five Years) and mimics Bacharach. Similarly, Small interrupts excellent turbo-charged sci-fi punk to drop into a bossa-nova section and an equally bewildering stab at cod reggae. Has no one ever told them about "too many chefs"?

Within individual tracks this is irritating; over the course of an album it's a problem. Ready to Receive is all over the place - as, you suspect, is Gardener's mind. Are the Animalhouse a determinedly experimental outfit? In which case, why employ Supergrass's producer Sam Williams, who has at times almost turned the 'House into an identikit of his other charges? Or are they a chuck-everything-in attempt at credible pop stardom - in which case why confuse the issue by putting all these weirdo knobs on? At times, plain bad songwriting doesn't help: notably the dismal Jesus Jones-country of Wasted. There are, though, some spectacular moments within this glorious failure.

The self-mythologising Animal House is wonderfully eerie (a Hotel California for Britpop refugees), while Animal plays the sci-fi Supergrass card again to more individual aplomb. Best of all, the superb Speakeasy creates scintillating results as Gardener's wistful vocal tackles the emotional subject of being true to yourself - oh, the irony of that one.

There is enormous potential here, but the Animalhouse really need a firmer pair of hands on the wheel. In other words, an old-fashioned dose of undemocratic megalomania

Dave Simpson

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