Slo-Mo Slo-Mo

From the cover shot of Slo-Mo mainman David Gledhill looking all moody in black and white, his face half in the shadows, it's clear the intention here is to take us on a journey of self-doubt/discovery to the core of what the nature of the human soul is.

We've heard it all before, of course. And just because the first line of the album is "we drink, we lie, we steal, we die, we dance all night... that's all we've got now" on Death Of A Raver doesn't mean we should get too excited. Sure, the idea that the Saturday night hedonism beloved by so many is really an escape from the futility of life is a nice one - tell it to Morrissey, he was writing about it on Death Of A Disco Dancer.

Which is really the problem with Slo-Mo - mostly it doesn't offer you anything you haven't heard in your record collection before. Fair play to Gledhill, he does actually manage some lyrical wit on Short Stories which examines the nature of the media using personal tragedies to hawk news. Junkie On A Fast Train, however, verges on the extremely crass - "I better check into my hotel, do not disturb, I got a drug problem".

Musically, its attempts at being adventurous don't manage to just come off - it's very much a 'now' record, unlikely to stand the test of time. If any record manages to define the sound of 'alternative' in 2003, this is it. It's not bad, but probably nowhere near as good as it would like to believe it is.