Arctic Reviews

Older heads might have cut a wry smile at the re-emergence of reformed junkie Anthony Genn. A veteran of brit-pop shenanigans a-plenty - not least a naked Glastonbury appearance on bass for Sleeper - that his new outfit The Hours would produce one of 2007's finest records represented the longest of shots. That record, Narcissus Road, was a cocktail of bitterness, mixing anger and intellect in equal parts. With lyrics chiseled with a polemical intensity, it bemoaned our state of moden apathy with stinging accuarcy, fueled by contempt for the status quo and all our parts in it. Along with companion Martin Slattery, Genn had proved that sounding epic didn't mean sounding like Coldplay. Emboldened by critical acknowledgement that followed, their manifesto has now been retuned; in 2009 they're now a group that "...Mean(s) what we say. Every note. Every beat. Every syllable".

On See The Light finds them the Roping in veteran producer Flood - whose previous experience includes taking The Killers to the grandiose Sam's Town - along with knob twiddler Cenzo Townsend. This move has added a degree of lustre true, but fundamentally The Hours are still about conform-to-deform, Trojan horsing their way onto a thousand coffee tables.

Genn obviously believes that if the message is important enough - the world is f*cked unless we as a species start working together - then the means of transmission should be as populist as is necessary. He duly spends opener Big Black Hole lamenting the lack of "Real men" and threatening to tell us "Something we might not want to hear" whilst an Athlete-esque piano twinkles incongruously - although a little annoyingly his actual sooth is never sayed.

It's a propaganda master plan which comes to fruition on the following These Days, a record so pop it might as well come with a free copy of TV Quick. With a background of chirping synths and kitchen sink strings, the lyrics optimistically tell us that life's not a rehearsal, and the undeniable simplicity of it all helps produce the best alt.stadium song that's not on a Doves album this year.

If this all sounds a bit Chris Martin on a bad day, perhaps you're right. But in a world where Cowell and Disney sell ten million albums a year, I'll take The Hours silk purses anyday. Wall of Sound may well sound like Oasis minus the self aggrandisment and Love is an Action like a not rubbish Keane, but at least See The Light rarely patronises. Only once, on Car Crash does it recall Narcissus Road's introverted pessimism. Too much attention will be paid to inconsequential snippets like the fact that Damien Hirst designed See The Lights' art work. What really matters isn't that Genn and Slattery are doing what they do for art not money, but that they understand you probably don't care about art. It's rock with values, archaic as that sounds. Genn proves that clean and sober he's far more interesting.