Richard Brabin

Børns – Blue Madonna

Pop music always seems to regurgitate the odd Børns once in a while – basically an artist that looks all strange and arthouse, designed for people who think they don’t suckle directly from the mainstream teat, even though the output of these caricatures is always just as two dimensional as their unashamed pop counterparts. Oh yeah, and they love a collaboration, needing someone else’s flames to burn their own, none too flammable, vacuous utterings.

Once we get past Lana Del Ray’s opener, stuck on the front of the album like a misguided badge of no honour, we get into the meat and gristle of a tedious and thoughtless album which tries desperately to be a Perfume Genius record but comes off like a more transparent Mika, if that was possible. The record bounds along like a lobotomised pigeon who’s lost the knack of flight so instead lollops around with all the poise of a toddler on ketamine, such is the clumsiness of emotive content and laziness of song diversity. It’s a real stinker.

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