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The Hollies "Staying Power" (2006)
Hope/So Damn Beautiful/Prove Me Wrong/Break Me/Shine On
Me/Suspended Animation/Touch Me/Emotions/Weakness/Live It Up/Yesterday's
Gone/Let Love Pass
"Yesterday's gone and don't you know
you'll never get it back again...ain't it a pity the way we live, always
thinking there should be more than this?"
From the opening 'yeah-e-yeah!' you know something
is up, deep within your bones. The Hollies have long since shown that they have
'staying power', weathering the storms of losing Graham Nash, Terry Sylvester,
Eric Haydock, Bernie Calvert, Allan Clarke, Mickael Rickfors, Allan Coates and
Carl Wayne across their (to this point) 43 year journey. Until now The Hollies
have managed to navigate each bus stop with dignity and honour, changing just
enough of their signature harmony sound and tough-pop to embrace the new
changes around them without sacrificing any of the integrity or uniqueness that
made The Hollies one of the most criminally under-rated bands there ever was. We
Hollies fans had been through such a lot down the years - bust ups, misfiring
reunion albums, decades-long silence and a complete rebranding of The Hollies
as cutesy pie teen fodder (how sad that Allan Clarke's 'normal' discography
should end with the horrific 'Woman I Love') and still we came back pleading,
hoping, yearning for this album to be a 'hit'. We told ourselves it wouldn't be
that bad - that though so many old friends are missing we still have that
ringing signature guitar sound of Tony Hicks, the still unbelievable drumming
of Bobby Elliott and bass and keyboard support roles by Ray Stiles and Ian
Parker who had by 2006 been with The Hollies longer than any other bassist or
keyboard had ever lasted with the group. Surely the twenty-three years between
studio albums had been good for The Hollies we told ourselves, made the band
hungrier than ever and given them plenty of time to build up a stockpile of
great songs, originals and covers. We were so eager to hear this record after a
generation away that we made pacts online to buy every relative we knew a copy
of the album for Christmas, just to make sure the album sold in such numbers
that the band would be forced to keep making more. We turned out in our
thousands to cheer the band on as they tried to pick up the pieces after the
untimely death of Carl Wayne (the band's lead singer between 1999, when Clarkey
left the band he'd founded after thirty-seven years and 2004, when he succumbed
to the cancer of the oesophagus he'd only just had diagnosed). We didn't quite
camp outside HMV and Virgin and Music Zone (we had all three back then...happy
days) the way people did for other big events - we were all getting on a bit
back then after all and hey it wasn't likely they were going to sell out of a
Hollies album was it? But nevertheless 'Staying Power' was a big deal in The
Hollies community, breaking a silence that seen the release of just two new
songs in the past decade.
And then we heard that opening 'ye-e-yeah' which started
the record and which instantly became the single worst three seconds on any
Hollies album (making 'Wiggle that Wotsit' sound like Wordsworth, 'Stewball'
sound like Cat Stevens and Rockin' Robin sound like Salman Rushdie,
philosophers all). It sounded like a cross between Cliff Richard, jazz hands
musicals and those slightly-too-full-of-themselves Christian bands who spent
more time sounding smug after saving their own immortal souls than interested
in saving yours or actually making any music. As it turns out, this was a
pretty neat summary of The Hollies' new singer Peter Howarth's career
trajectory who had spent a bit of time working with all three, none of them
even close to the same universe as being suitable for a job with The Hollies.
However it would be easy to blame the record on a new lead singer - the AAA
review of 'Romany' lambasts everyone who blamed Mickael Rickfors for the sheer
cheek of not even trying to sound like Allan Clarke for instance, when surely a
better move all round was to sound as little like the person you're replacing
as possible. 'Staying Power' is not the fault of one person at all, as the
problems run far far deeper than that, but the fault of a band and everyone
involved with all aspects of this record, from the production, to the album
packaging (the least flattering Hollies picture ever), to the song choices, to
the karaoke performances, to the decision to replace Bobby with alien digital
drums and Tony's guitar with a synthesiser thirty years out of date.
We carried on stoically, we Hollies fans, bravely
telling ourselves that the 'ye-e-eah' was simply a mistake, a case of
over-zealousness in a world that demanded every band had to sound like an X
factor contestant, oblivious of their long heritage or influence. Things would
get better when the track started properly we told ourselves - but it didn't. Instead 'Hope' turned into an
uglier younger sister of 'The Woman I Love', all clichéd lyrics, gabbled verses
that failed to scan and a sense that the song isn't even finished enough to be
treated as a first draft, never mind a completed track that had the
all-important distinction of re-igniting the band's legacy after almost a
quarter century away. Never mind, we thought, the next track has to be better
right? And it wasn't. Dreary and slow, exactly like the last song but without
even the distinction of the 'proper' drums and rocky beat, 'So Damn Beautiful'
turned out to be 'Really Damn Horrible'. And so the pattern went: surely the
next track would be better?...'Prove Me Wrong' the third track was titled but
proved our secret fears oh so right, adding a bit of hip hop now over an even
more 80s backing smothered not in Hollies harmonies but gospel singer rejects.
By the time 'Break Me' turned up with too-bad-to-be-a-Status-Quo-riff cardboard
cutouts we were broken, horrified and shocked at how many lows one great band
could sink to in one album. By the end of the record we were so desperate for
something to praise that we began talking about the slight grit of 'Suspended
Animation' with its 'Cher' style vocoder voice wobbles as proof the band could
still 'do' contemporary (a song that's as 2006 as 'Just One Look' was 1964 and
'On A Carousel' was 1967 - and I hated the cheap empty faceless pop of 2006
with a passion!) We talked about how good the opening of 'Touch Me' was for the
precisely eight seconds before the vocals and keyboards came in where it almost
sounded as good as Jefferson Airplane sequel Starship (nearly as good as the
travesty that was Starship? This is the flipping Hollies! How can this be
happening?!) We were pleased enough with 'Emotions' - the best song here by a
country mile thanks to actual Hollie harmonies and a lack of any real mistake -
to compare it to past Hollies classics, although next to 'Air That I Breathe'
and 'I'm Alive' it sounded patronising and false. We applauded 'Yesterday's
Gone' for the postmodern way it ticked off fans near the end of the CD still
disappointed at how the band now sounded not to live in the past, even though it's
a bit of a slap in the face The Hollies tried harder than ever to sound like a
completely different band (apart from the guitar solo, which shamefully stole
from 'I Can't Let Go' but with only a zillionth of the feeling). We pretended
in our hearts - some of us still to this day - that this album was ok, that it
did the job, that The Hollies had to move on and we had too, simply because we
didn't want the band to ever go away again. Most of the fan-posts and even the
music reviews of this album went 'I really wanted to like this album and well,
I suppose I did a bit but...' while trying to soft-coat things for the sheer
love of the brand-name.
Nine years on, with only one speedily recorded
successor in 'Then, Now, Always' (which is better, but only in the same way
'Forever' is a better Spice Girls album than 'Spiceworld', because it's shorter
and features less Geri Halliwell but both still sound horrendous) and no real
damage of hurting the band's chances of recording again (they should by the way
- there's a great album this line-up can do but neither of these records are it
- not yet) we can perhaps speak our mind a little bit more. As a near-enough
lifelong Hollies fan I expected to love all their records till the day I died.
No matter if some offerings were a little weaker than others - I'm the sort of
fan who found something nice to say about 'A Crazy Steal' and 'What Goes
Around...' because there was at least something worth listening to and the
mistakes simply showed up how great the things the band got right were. I've
made it my life's mission on this site to prove that a great talent is never
lost entirely, however long a period it might be misplaced, and that if you're
enough of a fan to have the patience you can learn as much from what you don't
like as what you do. But this - this isn't The Hollies. Tony plays a total of
three solos, one of which sounds unrecognisable, one of which mucks up the
'guitar/sitar' part of 'The Baby' (unforgiveable given that the band had been
playing it live a little while by then) and one of which so blatantly dangles
the sound of 'I Can't Let Go' in front of us that we can't tell if we're being
taunted or whether Hicksy was just on auto-pilot. One of the world's greatest
drummers, Bobby Elliott, is restricted to the pappy poppy simple pop-rock of
the era with no space and lots of noise, most of which doesn't even sound as if
it was played on real bands. I'm a big fan of Ian Parker, the band's greatest
unsung hero of recent years, who manages to update the sound he's playing for
every era while keeping something of the original sound - so why on earth did
he end up stuck in 1986 instead of 2006 or (better still) 1966? Ask most people
to name something The Hollies can do better than anyone else and they'll tell
you 'the harmonies'. I wouldn't have minded how ragged or rugged they might
have sounded for a band in their sixties (fans make allowances for these sorts
of things) or how much extra treacling went on in the studio afterwards (fans
tut-tut but concede to these sort of things in favour of getting new fans who
only love 'perfect' music to like their favourite bands too). But on 'Staying
Power' the band don't even try: instead we've got Peter Howarth's permanent
grin (even on the ballads about loss and fury) surrounded by multiple Peter
Howarths singing slightly more quietly in the background (which sounds like a
challenge, given the overwhelming power of most of the lead vocals) and a
troupe of backing singers from 'facelessgospelsingers.com' (Need us for an
advert? A pop song? A eulogy? A political statement? Great! They're all the
same thing anyway, right?!)
All of this could be excused (if never quite
forgiven) if The Hollies had come up with a decent set of songs to sound bland
and faceless to go all karaoke on us but no: 'Staying Power' features a good
eleven of the top twenty-five worst songs in their catalogue ever (most of the
rest are on 'Then, Now, Always by the way). Want to know how many Tony Hicks,
the one songwriter left in the band, actually wrote? So do most people probably
given the small print of the writing credits...which is all a ruse to cover up
the fact that he didn't write any of them. That's right! Sixteen years after
'No Rules' and 'Naomi' last gave Hollies fans something to shout about, Tony apparently
couldn't come up with anything better than even this sorry lot of songs!
Instead the twelve songs have been written by a collection of outside writers,
mainly Rob Davis and Mark Read together, separately or with other people. Most
reviewers were puzzled but this isn't actually an unusual tactic by The
Hollies: back in 1972 Colin Horton-Jennings came from nowhere to write half of
'Romany' and in 1978 Tony Hymas and Pete Brown alternated with Murray Head to
write almost all of '5317704'. But somehow those decisions made more sense. The
Hollies were always loyal to what they thought was talent that need recognising
(such as Clarke's championing of Bruce Springsteen before anybody knew who he
was) and all three songwriters turned in not just some great material but some
great Hollies material - yes songs like 'Delaware Taggett and The Outlaw Boys'
and 'Say It Ain't So Jo' didn't immediately sound like Hollies, but they were a
strong enough basis for the band to add their own touches too. This time round
it wouldn't surprise me if David and Read had never actually heard a Hollies
album in their lives. It wouldn't surprise me either that The Hollies never
actually heard the songs before they agreed to record them too (did they have
some sort of a blackmail hold over them all?) Every song comes with
excruciating rhymes a newbie songwriter would have thrown in the bin ('You can
take me or you can break me!' 'It's just the way you touch me baby
wo-a-woah-urrgh!') and nothing that hasn't been recycled from better sources
(and when those sources include Cliff Richard and Elton John you know you have
a problem). The resulting is an album full of rotten songs performed badly by a
great band who should know better with a singer who sucks a little more of my
life-force away every time I hear him go ye-e-e-ah' or 'wo-a-wo-ahhh' like John
Barrowman's younger brother. This isn't staying power, it's an attempt to make
long-term fans break down and cry.
It's 6 AM. I'm awake again. I can't get this sodding
album out of my head. I'm struggling to think of something nice I ought to have
said. Oh stuff it there isn't any - I'm going back to bed...No hold on hold on,
I'll do it properly. The Hollies are, after all, so damn beautiful right up
until this point. So here we go: I pride myself on always having something nice
to say about a record, however bad, so erm here goes. The Hollies do a better
job with their song 'Live It Up' than CSN did with theirs. They're also brave
enough to use a photograph of the band as they are now for the cover, which is
unusual these days (the Stones started a right old media fuss when they did
something similar the year before). Erm, I'm really struggling to think now.
They don't re-record 'Stewball' 'Sorry Suzanne' or 'Wiggle That Wotsit', will
that do?
More seriously, the band had to do something if they
wanted to continue and were in a very difficult situation - perhaps the worst
of their half century career. Allan Clarke's voice was fading rapidly during
his last couple of tours with the band and he had nobly decided to sacrifice
his career before it got any worse. The band did the sensible thing, rehearsed
lots with their new vocalist Carl Wayne away from the public eye (once from
Hollies rivals The Move) and took the opportunity to re-style their sound,
dropping several songs that had been played for decades in favour of rarer
songs that had never been heard live or in a few cases were given a
revolutionary makeover (the Carl Wayne version of 'Here I Go Again', which
sadly only exists on bootleg, is a thing of beauty; 'The Baby', a rare Rockfors
era single, sounded great). The band felt comfortable enough to record again
after three years with Carl in the band and were gearing up to make this album
even that long ago, with a 'teaser' from the planned album sessions How Do I
Survive?' released as a 'final' track on the band's excellent 'Long Road Home'
box set of 2003. Alas Wayne fell poorly before any more recordings could be
made and this ended up being his only recording. Though another three year gap
came and went before The Hollies resurrected their album career, I can't help
but wonder if the songs weren't actually chosen for Wayne. Many of these album
tracks are much closer in feel to things The Move did and Carl's grittier,
rockier vocals may have given these tracks just the right grit they needed to
get moving. 'How Do I Survive?' also proved to be the last Hollies recording by
stalwart Alan Coates after a couple of decades himself with the band and who
chose to leave after Carl's death when he saw the way the new line up was
heading (smart lad, that Alan Coates). No wonder the Hollies don't use many
harmonies on this record (even though they'd still sounded great as recently as
that 2003 Carl Wayne recording) - two of the three singers who made them aren't
here (the harmonies still sound pretty good on 'Emotions' though, the one song
on the album that uses them).
Given the circumstances - two new members on the
band's front line, a full thirteen years after the band had last been in the
studio en masse (for 'The Woman I Love' - in case you're wondering the song in
the middle is 'Peggy Got Sue Got Married', a Hollies overdub fest on the
original Buddy Holly recording for a tribute recording in 1997, happened to be
the swansong of Clarke with the band, alongside just Tony, Bobby and a
returning Nash. Avery fitting bookend it is too given the importance of Buddy Holly to the early
Hollies) you could forgive The Hollies for sounding a bit nervous or edgy. There
was a lot riding on this album - if it had failed to sell it seemed likely the
band wouldn't get another chance for at least another twenty-three years (the
gap since Nash reunion record 'What Goes Around'). Instead the band have never
sounded more confident, delivering every song with gusto and the one point that
reviewers did pick up on is how much 'livelier' this album is than period
'comeback' albums by 60s survivors: there are few ballads (though 'So Damn
Beautiful' is still one of the slowest songs the band have ever done), even the
simpler emptier songs come with doom-thwacka-bing-bang-bong drumming and Peter
Howarth's vocals are the musical farmyard equivalent of the rooster, waking and
energising everybody in the room. This doesn't sound like a bunch of
60-year-olds making their first album after a gap longer than most people in
the top ten at the time had been alive; The Hollies sound young - and genuinely
so, not artificially so.
These are all strong qualities. But the ultimate
decider is whether that confidence and energy is well used and in both cases
they're misplaced. yes The Hollies started out primarily as a 'pop' band (with
less rock and R and B influences than many of their rivals in the early days)
but they quickly shed that skin to try on different sets of stylistic clothes,
daring to keep the ones (like bossa nova, soul and psychedelia) that best
suited them while still keeping the 'pop' bounce high. There's nothing else
here but pop music - the only other time this ever happened ('What Goes
Around...') at least the band had the good grace to throw in a few deeper
lyrics and a 'real' sounding song in there sometimes ('Someone Else's Eyes' is
a good 'un, whatever you think of the rest of the record). Twelve awfully
similar sounding pop songs, which can all be heard being done better by
millions of different bands. The more Peter Howarth wants to gee me up like
he's in some glee club, the more I feel like going round to his house and
playing him 'King Midas In Reverse' to show him why The Hollies long ago
decided that sad was better than chirpy. There's a reason most 'comeback'
albums by 60s bands don't sound this lively: they've learnt that they look
stupid still offering at sixty what they offered at eighteen and have learnt so
much more in the interim that they barely remember what pop music is anyway.
The Hollies do sound young, but I'd rather hear them 'old' with all the things
they've learnt along the way etched in every song. If I want to hear them young
I'll listen to 'Ain't That (Just Like Me)' where they also happen to sound like
they mean it. The lack of that Hollies tradition the ballad, along with those
traditional harmonies, is the equivalent of re-hiring Pink Floyd to record a
low budget album that's small and compact (umm, err, actually that's just
described 'The Endless River' pretty well!) or getting Paul Simon to waste his
time performing duets with Sting (darn it, that's happened as well now - what's
happening to the 21st century?!): what is the point? Either make the most of
the changes in the band by taking the opportunity of doing something you've
never done before and do it well - or do what you were doing anyway to the best
of your abilities in the knowledge that your fans will understand what you were
trying to do. Don't for goodness sake sound like everyone else around at the
time, only not quite as good even as them (and dear God 2006 was awful: Gnarls
Barkley, The Arctic Monkeys, Take That's reunion...if The Hollies had released
anything even half-decent they'd have been within a shout of the charts, surely?)
I don't want to be too cruel. You know I love The
Hollies as much as anyone. I understand what a hard time they had making this
album after the loss of two lead singers and a harmoniser in six years and how
fundamentally this changed the band sound. Given that they'd never done it
before, Ray Stiles and Ian Parker's shared production is at least as good and
shiny as anyone else's in the era (only Bobby's drums are completely wrong, way
too high in the mix and sounding as if
they've been rinsed through with washing up liquid to take any element of
'rock' away). The more I hear this album (it's not one I play that often - and
every time I do I think 'good lord I'm never playing that again...') the more
I've come to appreciate 'Emotions', a song that would have been worth at least
a quick half thumbs up in another Hollies era (although you long for Allan
Clarke to sing it - or Mickael Rickfors, actually, he'd have sounded great on
this one too). The sequel to this record is better and proves that this line-up
of The Hollies have something to offer the world (even if I wish they'd move
off the same middling-paced tempo, add in some more harmonies and buy some
synthesisers that were actually dated dome time in the last twenty years). Like
many fans I long for The Hollies to do another and will gladly by it, no matter
how much teeth-clenching and nervous-hands-hovering-over-the-skip-button there
will be if it turns out like the two records we did get in this era. But loving
a band and wanting them to do well, whilst finding excuses and looking for
something - anything - to grasp onto before the album sinks under the weight of
pop quicksand up to its neck again is not enough of a reason to recommend this
record. I long for the band to prove me wrong - and I can't wait for the day
they do - but I have a feeling The Hollies might be over, in terms of records
at least (there are still many good reasons to see the band in concert in the
present day, by the way, especially now they've dropped most of the songs from
this awful record). Then again, that wasn't really The Hollies was it? A bad
record I can take, a misguided record I'd understand given the circumstances, a
flat record after such a long gap I was already braced for. But an un-Hollies
record without anything even close to anything the band had done before? That's
unforgivable. This album doesn't have 'staying power' - it sounded dated the
minute it was released and sold very poorly, not even matching 'A Crazy Steal'
or 'What Goes Around' - and after twenty-three years of wishing, dreaming and
hoping I can't tell you how sad that makes me.
Ye-e-yeah onto the songs and ye-e-yuk 'Hope' is exactly
the sort of thing the UK has been entering into the Eurovision in recent years:
noisy unfocussed pop songs with awkward rhymes and less emotion than Benedict
Cumberbatch's Sherlock Holmes stuck in a freezer. The one thing this song
shares in common with the old Hollies sound is the sense of optimism and that
things are going to be better in the future. But in contrast to 'I'm Alive' 'Hold
On' and 'Gasoline Alley Bred' there's no sense of understanding how bad things
can be before the sun comes out - instead this is just the noise of a man
screaming at us 'not to feel sorry for ourselves' and 'whatever it takes, hold
on!' If this wasn't The Hollies I could maybe forgive this song a little more -
the chorus is catchy in a turn-that-thing-off-now-before-it-drives-me-mad kind
of a way (exactly where we're going wrong with Eurovision actually - we want
songs that are memorable, not repetitive and annoying) and the chorus and verse
at least sound like they fit together, which is more than you can say about
most of the album. But flipping slippers it doesn't sound like The Hollies.
Tony Hicks seems to be doing everything he can not to sound like The Hollies,
the harmonies are wretched and hard to hear (tony doesn't sing from what I can
tell), Bobby Elliott's drum clatter like mice in the skirting board rather than
his old roaring lion technique and that lead vocal makes Freddie Mercury sound
like the shy and retiring sort. There's nothing like being yelled at to put you
off a song for life! Worryingly this not only standard for the album but one of
the better tracks. My poor ears... Oddly enough Allan Clarke wrote a song
called 'Hope' too for his 'I Wasn't Born Yesterday' album of 1978. Though I'm
not that keen on the earlier song either (Clarkey's dramatic performance is
very Peter Howarth now I think about it) but at least that one had a tune and
words that made sense - this song sounds like it's been badly translated from
somewhere, like Sweden (is it Mickael Rickfors under a pseudonym getting his
own back on the band who dared to jilt him for not sounding 'Hollies' enough?!)
Many fans fell in love with 'So Damn Beautiful',
partly because it was the first single from the album and the first to break
the years of silence and partly because it's the closest here to vintage
Hollies ballads of the past. But that's the trouble - it copies all the obvious
factors of Holliedom (harmonies, guitar solo - the highlight of the song for
all the three seconds it's here - and sweetly romantic lyrics) while still
coming out of the mix sounding more like second-hand Take That. And when one of
the greatest bands of the past fifty years ends up sounding like a godawful
boyband whose songs all sound the same - well, the result is so damn ugly and
not beautiful at all. The lyrics try hard to make us feel for the narrator, who
wakes up at 6AM with his head filled of love for his girl and the first verse
does make you feel...something, which is more than most songs on here (though
in truth sick to my stomach is more like it). But what happens next? This turns
into a song about stalking! Despite the aching verses about how much the narrator
loves his woman and everything she stands for, it turns out they haven't even
met properly yet! ('I don't even know your name - you never gave that much
away.') Worse yet, the narrator doesn't even seem to have tried to talk to her
- instead he slipped his phone number into her pocket and is waiting for her to
call - yeah like that's going to happen. I haven't even mentioned the tune yet,
which is like so many similar toothless ballads stuck together in a blender to
take anything resembling an actual tune or any real grit and feeling out so
that The Hollies won't upset the horses. Offensive in its very inoffensiveness,
this is a real low from a band I once defended to the ends of the earth. Yes
things couldn't stay sounding the same as before - not with so many band
members gone - but with so many genres the band used to tackle brilliantly
without even trying, why did they want to sound like this?
'Prove Me Wrong' you want to say to the album - give
me something I can get excited in! 'Prove Me Wrong' nearly does, for the
opening ten seconds of musicianship is at least quite inviting - Bobby hits a
nice rock groove and Ian Parker's happy synths meshed with Tony's 'sitar
guitar' makes for an okay-ish groove. But then the synth strings sweep in,
dripping more treacle than a treacle well and the vocals start up with Peter
Howarth more agonisingly artificial and emotionless than ever. Sounding more
like a Spanish Eurovision flop, this song is a big torch ballad that tries hard
to grow verse by verse, but only ends up sounding more and more exaggerated and
inflated with each extra section. Howarth's narrator wants to know why his
relationship isn't as strong as it used to be (did he sing 'well
yeee-aeeeahhhhh' to her too many times?) and even quotes from an old Hollies
classic when he sings 'our touch isn't the same as it was before'. But there's
no rosy Mickael Rickfors tones to get lost in, no slow sense of a song
unfolding and blossoming into life naturally, no great musicianship to get
excited about - just a song not even good enough to send to Westlife which
grows out of control as early in as the minute mark. Clearly, then, an album
highlight compared to most things here (at least this song had promise and
threw it away - most of the songs don't even have that!)
'Break Me' is the one that broke me though. A
slightly faster paced aggressive guitar sound makes the band now sound like
leftover AC/DC - but the clumsy-footed modern band rather than the days when
they actually had some promise. The chorus of this song is one of the single
ugliest things I've ever heard - 'You can take me, you can break me, but you
can't kill my love!' sneers Howarth like he's Liam Gallagher, but the backing
is tinny and horrid, the sort of thing normally only a pre-teen would try
because they can get away with sounding 'cute' (the first Billie Piper album
all sounds like this). But The Hollies don't sound cute - they sound deranged,
like they're trying so hard to take our interest with a sound so modern it's
already dated more than anything in their classic years in the last decade and
with harmonies that are a sheer mockery of what the band always used to stand
for. The highlight of the song by far is Tony Hicks' quick guitarwork, which
manages to share a little bit of greatness with the sound of old, channelling the
old solos he used to play during the blistering ten minute live versions of 'Long
Cool Woman In A Black Dress' the band used to do. But then he sounds
hilariously out of place playing thrash metal chords over the opening which are
so alien to the Hollies sound and this is one of many songs on the album that
would sound better if it actually bothered to have a riff instead of just an
instantly forgettable hook in the chorus. This song took three whole writers to
mess up and one of them was Enrique Inglesias. I've always hated Enrique Inglesias
since before this album came out but this is easily his worst moment too. Why
is a pumped up posing wannabe writing songs for The Hollies in the first place?
Who called him and why? ('Yeah that's right - we're the band who did such
timeless classic cover songs as 'Bus Stop' 'Look Through Any Window' and 'I
Can't Let Go' but we're not interested in any of those - just give us your
usual empty pop fodder please, just not quite up to your usual low standard').
Lordy lordy - it's going to take ten days of playing 'Evolution' and
'Butterfly' back to back before I can begin to feel clean again after this.
Perhaps I'm just getting worn down, but 'Shine On
Me' sounds like a slight improvement. Howarth sings in falsetto and everyone
sounds daft singing in falsetto so you can forgive the vocals that little bit
more. The synths back away to reveal more of Tony and Bobby - they're not doing
anything that exciting but, hey, I can hear them, this is an improvement. The
song makes a bona fide attempt to grow in stature little bit by little bit
until the best chorus of the album arrives, with some actual
nearly-recognisable harmonies until the gospel singers join in uncomfortably
too. However the lyrics are still absolute trash, so badly in need of a
re-write. Most of them don't even rhyme: 'Like a tide we rise and fall, we sail
on through the storm'. Eh?! So it continues: 'life' doesn't rhyme with
'sacreee-fice' no matter how badly you try to make it, 'alone and carry on'
come close but no cigar and what is this song's grand chorus line hook: 'Oh
baby, you were my fight'. That doesn't even make sense! And these lyrics aren't
hard to write: here's my improvement on the chorus to singalong with (and drown
out the real lyrics) and it took me all of two minutes to write: 'I was
standing in the park, listening to The Hollies in the dark waiting for the band
to wash over me, the band who once enriched my life, are now stabbing with a
knife, making music so hopelessly, I have nowhere left to go and I can't take
it anymore, I really don't want to know just want to take it back to the store,
'cause I'm tired of holding out and giving all I've got, while longing that the
album will contain something other than just rot, yes I felt the walls closing
in around me, and just when I thought this album might astound me, baby I so
wasn't right'. I'm also available for the next Hollies album, by the way, and I
bet I'm a lot cheaper than Enrique Flipping Inglesias too.
'Suspended Animation' wins the 'most inventive song
on the album award' so kudos for that: Bobby turns in quite an impressive drum
shuffle, the band go all trip-hop (a sort of psychedelic hip-hop) and there are
some nice harmonies, even if most of them are the artificial sort played by
keyboard. Alas the song itself is utterly forgettable without that backing and
the chorus once again sounds unfinished and doesn't even try to scan: 'They say
you never rise above your station' turns 'station' into a ten syllable word and
even then it's a couple short of what it needs to reach the end of the line.
The subject should be Hollies-like - a love sick narrator pines his life away
'for a girl who just wants to play' who sounds not unlike an older (but still
no wiser) Carrie Anne, while the poor lonely narrator mopes his life away. The
backing almost does a good job of suggesting a life now running at half speed,
if it weren't for Bobby's most energetic playing yet, while the harmonies are
nicely surreal and dreamlike. But the 'vocoder' effect on Peter's vocal is
distracting and so of its time it hurts (at least it was quite inventive when
Cher resurrected it on 'Believe' - by 2006 so many bands had done it this was
the single most obvious thing you do to a song). Even so, relatively speaking,
this is more like it as at least The Hollies are falling flat on their faces
while trying to stretch out and do something a little different and for that at
least I salute them, even if I still don't want to particularly go back and
hear this track ever again.
Actually the songs in the middle of the album do
seem a little less lumpy than the others. I'm not so sure about the 'come on
baby aw-huh' chorus that comes on like a robotic Elvis or the 'ye-e-eah-yay!' hook-line
or sidelining one of the greatest guitar talents of his generation on a riff
that wouldn't exactly give Status Quo sleepless nights. But hey 'Touch Me' is
the first song on the album you can imagine The Hollies doing in their previous
life - the way Howarth sings the line 'I'm more than just a
one-night...staaaaaaand', for instance, is exactly the way Clarkey would have
sung it in the 1970s while the backing does have a few 60s touches in it (with
a cheery busy Ian Parker synth riff) alongside this album's obsession with the
1980s and 2000s. Though still embarrassingly light and twee, at least the
lyrics show a modicum of character as Howarth's narrator asks a girl he's been
seeing to become something more in his life. Sung with wild Hollies abandon,
with a catchy (again slightly too-catchy - like this album is a virus or
something) chorus and an optimistic feel, I'd have been much happier about the
album all round if it had reached this base level rather than some of the
others. Though I like my Hollies deep and thoughtful, there's a place in the
world for pop music if it's done ever so well and this one at least shows a
little care and thought, if still nowhere near even the final few years of the
Clarke band (this song still falls short of 'Shine Silently' 'Find Me A Family'
and 'Purple Rain' - it just isn't as mercilessly bad as 'The Woman I Love' for
a change). However even this song has a few really daft moments. Take the final
verse, which is hard to hear in any case (and sensibly the band don't bother
printing the godawful lyrics to these songs in the CD booklet, even though
that's what almost all band do nowadays): 'As if you didn't know you got me
feeding from your hand, my chef is gonna blow - and baby it ain't going to end
till your command'. I feel sick!
'Emotions' is the song on the album I've always
liked, not just in a 'gee there must something in this album to make me justify
forking out full price on an album I'll never play again - gee that three
second Tony Hicks guitar solo was really promising there for a milli-second'
kind of way. Howarth sounds better on the ballads and far better when he's got
some actual genuine, well, 'emotion' to impart. His voice combined with a still
rather-good Hicks/Lauri harmony part is the single most convincing moment on
the album and the sighing melody is pretty, recalling 'Soldier's Song' in the
way it rises and falls with a why-can't-I-change-this? shrug. Ian Parker has
finally worked out how to add modern sound effects onto a Hollies song by using
them as decoration instead of where the rest of the band ought to be (I've
always rated his playing, not that we got that many chances to hear it - this
is more proof of just what a fine and sensitive player he can be when the
material is as good as he is). Better yet Tony plugs his guitar in - his real
electric guitar this time - and plays like he actually believes what he means,
for the only time on the album that doesn't have him going through the paces. The
lyrics still needs a re-write as badly as all the other songs here, sounding
more like a greetings card than a song ('Everyday the world gets harder to
face, For those loving arms there's no better place') but, credit where it's
due, the chorus is a good one: 'Emotions running away with me, changing me
endless, affecting my gravity'. It's a clever way of suggesting 'falling' in
love, which is something every other song on this album does too pretty much
but in a way that hasn't been expressed gazillions of times before. On any
other album this might sound average, but here it's a golden rosy moment in a
sea of mediocrity, proof that this line-up of The Hollies still have a way
forward and that their signature sound really does have a place in the modern world.
Excuse me, I'm getting quite emotional...
Alas 'Weakness' is the start of a run of weak songs
again. By now the songs are conforming to a pattern: soft atmospheric openings,
sad simple verses, powerpop choruses that are meant to erupt (but come across
as obvious and inevitable) and a key change in the middle eight that really
sticks the knife in. It's a pattern that can work: 'I'm Alive' was the first
Hollies song to use it and many many more have used it since. But 'Weakness' in
particular sounds like exactly what you expect from the moment the song starts
and doesn't have any surprises in there at all. It also features the worst
single performance by Tony and Bobby yet: Tony sounds like every other slick
posing wannabe who only actually knows how to play two guitar chords
throughout, while Bobby is so far away from the beat at times its most
disheartening. Above it all, sits, no screams Peter Howarth doing his best
impression of Starship's Mickey Thomas and John Barrowman if they'd had a baby
together (shouty in other words) with all the usual Hollies subtlety long gone.
Once again the narrator can't sleep (me neither - and this album ringing in my
ears isn't helping!) and is lying in bed sighing, wondering why he 'burns' for
a girl who doesn't even seem to know he exists. He feels weak, time stands
still, the world seems like it's going to end...go and take a cold shower and
listen to the similarly love-struck but better in every way 'Romany' or
'Another Night' is the AAA doctor's advice. Talk about sixty going on sixteen...
'Live It Up' is the worst response to racism and
sexism I've ever heard. The narrator is tired of living in a world where 'we're
straight, we're gay, we're bi, we're black, we're white - but why to tell the
truth we lie?' So he goes out on the town to party and be himself and wants
everyone else to as well. Despite the fact that racist/homophobic morons will
be out in droves and will only pick on their prey again - do talk sense! This
is terrible writing of the highest order and even throws in another
over-dramatic 'Do you say I'm fine cos' I died!' chorus line that's meant to
sound all edgy and emotional but just sounds like the silliest thing since The
Spice Girls were talked about as if they were singers, not mass-media puppets.
If the lyrics are outright offensive, though, at least they're less offensive
than the bland tune which is so instantly forgettable that in itself is a
criminal offence. Hicks sounds as if he's playing underwater, the backing is so
empty and cavernous that if you stripped the vocals out this would be the
single emptiest Hollies song ever and Bobby's drums play pat-a-cake with the
listener after forty-odd years of being the greatest drummer-boxer on the
planet. The one redeeming feature of this song is Peter's vocals, which are
genuinely sincere and moving and sound as if he really connected with this
song. Goodness knows why though - a second co-write with Enrique Blooming
Inglesias, this is the sort of song that in future decades will give the
mid-00s a bad name: patronising and empty.
'Yesterday's Gone' alas has Peter 'intoning' again
like a gorilla learning to talk. I'm not sure what I think of this song, which
is totally forgettable melody-wise and sounds more like 'Starship' than ever
with a stupid chorus that's just 'We Built This City' with even more ye-e-eah's
thrown in too. The lyrics try though, they really do, the closest The Hollies
ever came to writing a third social protest song alongside 'Gasoline Alley
Bred' and 'Too Young To Be Married'. Though the credit crunch was still a good
eighteen months away yet, this is a lyric about 'people trying to make ends
meet' and 'always looking over their shoulder', which shows a bit of emotional
integrity as Howarth urges the listener not to 'have a heart of stone' and
accept that though the present might be sad 'we've always got tomorrow'. This
could also, of course, refer to The Hollies' own position of having to have
overcome so many obstacles to reach this point and sounds as if even they know
it's not like the old days. To underline the point Tony revives the spirit of
'I Can't Let Go' with his wild guitar solo which is over far too quick. But
here's the rub: 'Yesterday's Gone' sounds as if it's pointing out the problems
with the world or even The Hollies as they are now, but offers no solution or
offer of help. In terms of this song being about The Hollies career you could
argue that this song says 'yeah it's not as good as the old days' whilst doing
their best to show us why it's not as good as the old days. I'd rather the band
had simply stuck with doing what they did best - nicely constructed pop songs
based around real emotions and real instruments, not sound as they're trying to
audition for pop idol or X Factor. The only part of this song that rings true
are the lyrics about taking it easy, of 'lying in the sunshine sipping red
wine' while the world goes to hell around the narrator, oblivious. This, sadly,
is the image I take from this album not the promising first verse when it
sounds like this band are going to put the world to rights the way they always
did. Yes, yesterday's gone, but they needn't sound so smug about it.
Against all odds 'Let Love Pass' is a fair album
closer. I wouldn't say I like it in the same way I liked 'Emotions' and I
certainly don't love it the way I do a good 70% of The Hollies discography. But
this song sounds like a message to fans - the fans like me who aren't quite
sure what they think of the new-look Hollies. 'I won't cry' sings Peter at his
best (i.e. quiet - he's got a really lovely voice when he isn't shouting or
using the vibrato wobble all 21st century kids seem to think passes as real
singing) 'if you tell me this is it'. He even tells us that this is our choice,
our prerogative 'if that's what you want', but at the same time tries to tell
us about all the love The Hollies still have for their audience. Even the
mocking middle eight ('One day you'll realise that you've thrown away') I can
forgive - at least it's a bit of real emotion and the band sing this simply and
with more sophistication than the rest of the record. Well to be fair, I doubt
for a second the writers Braide and Davis were thinking of the band's long
career when they wrote this - at face value this is just another sickly love
ballad. However the performance is far more powerful and 'straight' than
anything else the band do and the fact this album sits right at the end of the
album does suggest to me a sort of certain finality - as if, after a
twenty-three year gap, the band are determined to make sure the Hollies album career,
if it does end, ends definitively this time rather than the sarcastic note of
'Having A Good Time' (the last song on 1983's 'What Goes Around...' ). The
Hollies must have known they had an uphill battle convincing long-timers like
me that this new sound with two new members was a) still The Hollies and b)
worth hearing, so it's rather sweet to think that they might be trying to do a
'Romany' and cut us off at the past. You have to admire a band who says 'this
what we're like now - like or lump it though obviously we hope you love it'.
Had the album been more like this - understated rather than full of overkill,
sophisticated rather than twee and sounding as if more than five minutes had
been spent working on it - then I would have liked it a lot more.
However, even with the self-knowing final track and
the relative highlights 'Suspended Animation' 'Touch Me' and 'Emotions' that's
a third of the album that's almost passable, with eight tracks that are
different shades of excruciating. To put that in context, only the two covers
albums ('Sing Dylan' and 'Sing Holly') came close to odds that bad and you
don't expect to hear that much ambition from covers albums anyway (all you can
ask is that the band don't mess up too many times - something I'm not sure we
can really say about those albums either). Clearly something has gone intrinsically
wrong here (for me anyway - I'm rather alarmed at how many other fans actually
seem to like it, though as we said earlier I'm sure half of them are kidding
themselves!) and not just in one place, but many. The songs, the strength of so
many Hollies records, are all from the same three sources and that's a problem
if all three sources can't actually write - well only up to forgettable
Eurovision standard. If you're going to make an album with such a different
sound - with two new vocalists and a far bigger role for Ian Parker than he
ever had when he was a newbie back in the 80s and 90s - then for goodness sake
use your 'old' members as much as you can. Bobby Elliott might as well not have
turned up, sounding as if he's been replaced by a drum machine on some tracks and
sounding tinny and false even on the songs where he isn't. Tony Hicks gets more
to do, but doesn't exactly 'star' - the rest of the band wheel him on as if
they're doing a favour to 'Grandad' (who for the record still looks younger
than almost all of the band - so much for him being just a year younger than
Keith Richards!) whereas even The Hollies at their worst always had Hicks as an
integral part of the sound, in every era. Tony should have been given more
space to work with than ever, not less than when he was a flipping newcomer
back in 1963!
Throwing out every element of The Hollies sound and replacing
the famous rockers and ballads alike with slightly-livened-up-slowies is a
truly terrible move. Taking out the Hollies harmonies (which still sound pretty
darn good the one time we hear Peter, Steve and Tony unencumbered by anonymous
session singers on 'Emotions') is outrageous. The Hollies have so much great
history to choose from - so why did they go back to where their album career
left off, a sappy pop album full of covers where you can tell that the band
spent as little time together in the studio as they could (if ever a band
needed to be playing all at the same time...well it's The Who actually but The
Hollies comes a close second). I wish I could be more supportive. I do think
that producers Ray and Ian did a great job on the production under very trying
circumstances and this record is certainly no worse than the Take That album
which sold bucket-loads that year and is clearly the single biggest influence
on this record. But The Hollies were a band who once rode shoulder to shoulder
with the greatest bands in the business - they shouldn't be reduced to hanging
on to the coat-tails of latterday pop bands who can't even write or sing or
even appear in the studio at the same time together; using modern music as a
guide to making The Hollies is an idea that should have been strangled at
birth. The album is called 'Staying Power' for a reason - after all, how many
other bands ever bounced back from as many disasters and line-up changes as The
Hollies? It would have been nice if the band had remembered some of it. This
record currently sits in my AAA hall of shame, along with other bands who
should have known better (Paul McCartney's 'Chaos and Creation In The Back
Yard', Neil Young's 'Greendale', The Moody Blues' 'December' and Pink Floyd's
'A Momentary Lapse Of Reason' are all in there too, just in case you think I'm
only picking on The Hollies here). But in many ways this album is worse, simply
because after such a long gap away I expected...something. I was all ready to
praise this album whatever it sounded like, just for the sheer joy of having to
make room on my Hollies shelf for a new CD I never thought I'd live to see. I
could have taken the pale Hollies pastiches. I would have accepted the uneasy
hybrids of the classic and modern sound. I would have been completely
understanding that Tony and Bobby are slowing down and can't sound like they
always did. Heck, I was even ready to admit that there was life after Allan
(they did it before with the great 'Romany' and 'Out On The Road', they can do
it again, right?) But I thought there's be something here that even if it
wasn't all that good at least sounded like The Hollies. I was already to accept
new for what it was - but completely alien? Why? What on earth is the point
when so many other gone-tomorrow bands do this sort of stuff better? Thankfully
The Hollies seem to realise this and will bounce back with 'Then, Now, Always'
so at least this tired album won't be the last in the canon, even if they never
make another one. Yes that album is exactly what we were thinking above - a
tired cynical mix of the old and modern, with pale pastiches of songs we've known
and loved, played by a band who sometimes sound past it, struggling to sound
young. But it has heart, it's brave enough to make mistakes and it sounds at
least on rare occasions like The Hollies. That was all I asked: a boyband
Hollies makeover I did not. Ye-e-eah!
A NOW
COMPLETE LIST OF HOLLIES ARTICLES TO READ AT ALAN’S ALBUM ARCHIVES:
'Stay With The Hollies' (1964) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/the-hollies-stay-with-hollies-1964.html
'Stay With The Hollies' (1964) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/the-hollies-stay-with-hollies-1964.html
'In The Hollies Style' (1964) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/the-hollies-in-hollies-style-1964-album.html
'The Hollies' (1965) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2010/12/news-views-and-music-issue-83-hollies.html
'Would
You Believe?' (1966) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2016/06/the-hollies-would-you-believe-1966.html
'For Certain, Because' (1966) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/the-hollies-for-certain-because-1966.html
'Evolution' (1967) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-11-hollies-evolution-1967.html
'Butterfly' (1967) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-14-hollies-butterfly-1967.html
‘Hollies Sing Hollies’ (1969) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/the-hollies-sing-hollies-1969.html
'Confessions Of The Mind' (1970) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-39-hollies-confessions-of-mind.html
'For Certain, Because' (1966) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/the-hollies-for-certain-because-1966.html
'Evolution' (1967) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-11-hollies-evolution-1967.html
'Butterfly' (1967) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-14-hollies-butterfly-1967.html
‘Hollies Sing Hollies’ (1969) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/the-hollies-sing-hollies-1969.html
'Confessions Of The Mind' (1970) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-39-hollies-confessions-of-mind.html
'A
Distant Light' (1971) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-hollies-distant-light-1971-album.html
'Romany' (1972) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-52-hollies-romany-1972.html
'Out On The Road' (1973) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2010/06/news-views-and-music-issue-62-hollies.html
'Headroom' (Allan Clarke solo) (1973) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-57-allan-clarke-headroom-1973.html
'Romany' (1972) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-52-hollies-romany-1972.html
'Out On The Road' (1973) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2010/06/news-views-and-music-issue-62-hollies.html
'Headroom' (Allan Clarke solo) (1973) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-57-allan-clarke-headroom-1973.html
'The
Hollies' (1974) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/the-hollies-hollies-1974-album-review.html
'Another
Night' (1975) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/the-hollies-another-night-1975.html
‘Write On’ (1976) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/the-hollies-write-on-1976.html
‘Write On’ (1976) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/the-hollies-write-on-1976.html
‘Russian
Roulette’ (1976) http://www.alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/the-hollies-russian-roulette-1976.html
'A
Crazy Steal' (1978) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/the-hollies-crazy-steal-1978.html
'5317704' (1979) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/news-views-and-music-issue-110-hollies.html
'5317704' (1979) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/news-views-and-music-issue-110-hollies.html
'What
Goes Around..." (1983) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-hollies-what-goes-around-1983.html
'Staying
Power' (2006) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/the-hollies-staying-power-2006.html
‘Then,
Now, Always’ (2009)
https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/07/the-hollies-then-now-always-2009.html
'Radio Fun' (BBC Sessions) (2012) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/news-views-and-music-issue-145-hollies.html
The Best Unreleased Hollies Recordings http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/the-hollies-rarities-ii-best-unreleased.html
'Radio Fun' (BBC Sessions) (2012) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/news-views-and-music-issue-145-hollies.html
The Best Unreleased Hollies Recordings http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/the-hollies-rarities-ii-best-unreleased.html
Surviving
TV Footage 1964-2010 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/the-hollies-surviving-tv-footage-1964.html
Non-Album
Songs Part One: 1963-1970 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/the-hollies-non-album-songs-part-one.html
Non-Album
Songs Part Two: 1971-2014 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/the-hollies-non-album-songs-part-two.html
Live/Solo/Compilation/US Editions/Covers Albums Part One 1964-1975 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/the-hollies-livesolocompilationouttakes.html
Live/Solo/Compilation/US Editions/Covers Albums Part One 1964-1975 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/the-hollies-livesolocompilationouttakes.html
Live/Solo/Compilation/US
Editions/Covers Albums Part Two 1976-2014 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/the-hollies-livesolocompilationouttakes_21.html
Essay:
What Exactly Was The Hollies’ Style? https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2018/02/the-hollies-essay-what-excatly-was.html
Five
Landmark Concerts and Three Key Cover Versions https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-hollies-five-landmark-concerts-and.html
