Sweet Sweet Lies - The Hare, The Hound and The Tortoise Album Review

Brighton's indie scene gets a refreshing comedic twist in the form of rockers Sweet Sweet Lies, with the release of their latest full length studio album entitled The Hare, The Hound and the Tortoise. It's released through Something Nothing Records, a label already having much success with indie artists such as Billy Vincent.

Initially, it's very tell if Sweet Sweet Lies are a comedy band with serious aspects or if they're a serious band with a comedy element, but either way, it seems that they're good to listen to, if a little disappointing. It's the sort of album that one might listen to when they aren't feeling too great and need to listen to something to put a smile on their face, so in that respect, it's actually quite good. It's packed full of sing-along catchy choruses and hooks, good crunchy guitar sounds and 'what-on-Earth-did-he-just-say?' lyrics. In fact, it sometimes sounds like a cross between a set of sea-shanties and typical Eastern European music, in a pleasant-yet-weird kind of combination.

It inspires a dancing motion in the shoulders and yet, on the downside, sometimes it's quite hard to take it seriously as an album. There are only few more serious songs on the album, which actually might actually be the highlight of it, such as No-one Will Love You (Like I Do). These more serious songs are too few and far between, which leaves a tantalising insight into what the album could be.

But even then, on the more serious songs, it has a slight ironic feel to it and it's still hard to take it seriously. This might be the biggest failing of this album, because musically, vocally and in terms of production, it's actually very good.

This is, therefore, really quite a disappointing album, because it's an album that's clearly taken talent to put together and has huge amounts of potential. The songs are all well written, recorded and mixed and make a pleasant sound to the eardrums. The presence of the irony only exacerbates this, because it's cleverly done to add this aspect into the album so effectively.

Overall, The Hare, The Hound and the Tortoise, inspires a broad spectrum of feelings inside the listener; they might find the songs funny, inspiring, strange or even enjoyable. For this reviewer though, it seems like a little bit of wasted potential, but still musically very good. For that reason then, it gets a 6.5/10.

Sam Saunders