Rivers Cuomo’s Weezer are oft cited as the worst band ever to release two great records. Those LPs in question are The Blue Album, originally released in 1994 and Pinkerton, their sophomore sound of 1996. There’s then a fourteen-year abyss in which the band’s spotty geek rock’s plummeted into meat’n’two-veg radio rock and contrived palm-muted “party” anthems featuring Lil’ Wayne. If that doesn’t get integrity alarm bells blaring, well perhaps nothing could... Until you get your ears round
Free Energy; the worst band never to release a decent track. Free Energy are a quintet from Philadelphia that sound like Ash’s Tim Wheeler fronting contemporary Weezer, whilst The Darkness’ Justin Hawkins ostentatiously pleasures his fretboard in the background. And you’d probably have to look back to 2005, to the likes of The Holloways and The View to bump into an aurally apparent influence list as contrived and out of touch with the signs of the times as that... So why exactly James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem infamy got caught producing Stuck On Nothing, a lethargic run-through of anaemic Thin Lizzy cock rock is about as puzzling as all the nonsensical electoral reform bravado that’s sent Britain spiralling into a self-obsessed chaos of late. There’s nothing we can do. And there’s no way of putting a plug on the endless stream of college power rock that spurts from the American mainstream like artificial blood from Tarantino’s filmography, year, after year, after year.
Free Energy are a little like All-American Rejects rubbed up against brass sections in the Caribbean sun on Dream City, before resorting to the tried-and-tested rite of passage to swish overdone production on All I Know, employing swooning strings in a snooze-inducing lollop that sounds as dated as Tunde belting out High from the summit of his Lighthouse Family. ‘Bad Stuff’ does exactly what it says on the tin, and falling halfway through the record distinctly marks the weathering of tethers as another sub-standard Raditude offcut. With an artistic output about as inspiring as Rotherham, it’s actually rather taxing to proclaim a single plus-point with Free Energy; even the album artwork’s about as pioneering as teen angst from behind doors splattered in Rival Schools stickers, depicting a Converse High Top boot coming away from an adhesive encounter with some rancid fluorescent pink Bubble Yum™. Judge it by the cover and don’t tread on Stuck On Nothing, unless you’re ok with stomping pesky bubblegum rock into your record collection...
