Make This Your Own - Cooper Temple Clause

Advantages: A much more mature sound, some very very good tracks
Disadvantages: Didn't get the press attention it deserved

...be the catalyst to really make a name for themselves again. It seems to be a far more mature release from the Cooper's and whether that is intended to break into the main stream or it could just be by change. The fact is the Berkshire 5 piece seem to have moved on a lot and learned from the previous albums. From my first listen of this album I felt it was an attempt to get the band a bigger fan base, but the lack or PR and radio airplay seems to ...
...It's the guitars that really make the Cooper's albums so good to listen to and they combine really well with the bass, which provides a decent backbone to every track on the album. As songwriters they have always impressed me and with the beat really being provided by the drums and bass combination this is once again a very solid musical effort. One of the things that has always drawn me back to the Cooper Temple Clause has been the vocals and once ... Read review

Advantages: Old dogs learn new tricks
Disadvantages: Said old dogs forget to polish the old ones

After a label change and the loss of their bassist Didz Hammond to Dirty Pretty Things (more a loss of entertainment value than of real musicianship one suspects – three of the band play bass anyway), TCTC come back with this, their experimental third album. They have tried pop, rock, electronica, emo, ballads, and even something approaching an eighties’ soft-rock power ballad style in the chorus of What Have You Gone And Done? Unsurprisingly, the ...
...with the emo-tinged vocals of Waiting Game, and Isn’t It Strange, which (intentionally or not) is far too similar to U2’s Where The Streets Have No Name. Other instances of “could do better” are due mostly to an insistence on key changes, which are apparently ‘all you'll ever need’, as sung by vocalist Ben Gautrey on 2002 release See This Through And Leave. It seems that TCTC have taken this maxim too literally, relying heavily on “uplifting” key ... Read review