The Vacation ‘Band from World War Zero’ (Echo)

There is a lot of rock music kicking around at the moment, and I can’t be expected to like all of it. I am not about to pan ‘The Vacation’, because ‘BFWWZ’ isn’t offensively bad, but there is so much more music about that I would rather be listening to it’s untrue. To be fair, there is a couple of tracks I quite like – ‘Make Up Your Mind’ has a nicely punk rock sound and ‘I’m No Good’ is ironically pretty good – but just under five minutes of decent songs is clearly inadequate for a 35 minute album. Despite the lack of evidence of spandex, peroxide and hairspray, the album has a real crotch-grabbing glam rock feel to it, but without the quality of Aerosmith, or even Skid Row, what could the future hold for The Vacation? Perhaps just the one fluky top 40 U.S. hit, then maybe a return to the headlines twenty years down the line, with beer bellies and illegal pyrotechnics? Mystic Meg I ain’t, but to predict a more auspicious future would be remarkably bold, if not downright ridiculous.

words: Harry Harris

Various ‘DJ Kicks mixed by Daddy G’ (!K7)
Massive Attack’s Daddy G uses his time off from the band to compile the latest in the DJ Kicks mix series. It’s everything you would expect from the Bristol trip-hopper and so it should be. Kicking off with some excellent reggae including Melaaz’s francophone version of Dawn Penn’s ‘No No No’, the dub feel continues throughout. There’s Massive Attack remixes of Arab singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Les Negresses Vertes, plus funk from Meters, soul from Aretha and r’n’b from Foxy Brown. He also gives a previously unreleased mix of Tricky’s Aftermath a spin. Nice to see there’s no hard feelings there. Leftfield get an outing with ‘Inspection/Check One’, and there’s also a great mix of ‘Karma Coma’, Massive Attack’s collaboration with Mos Def ‘I Against I’ and closing the album, a contained Paul Oakenfold remix of their classic ‘Unfinished Sympathy’. Daddy G’s record box contains the records you might have imagined it would contain, and they’re all worth hearing.