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Every Move A Picture - Heart = Weapon (V2)
UK release date: 5 June 2006
3 stars
Every Move A Picture - Heart = Weapon

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track listing

1. Mission Bell
2. Signs Of Life
3. Best Is On The Outside
4. Chemical Burns
5. Outlaw
6. Dust
7. Simple Lessons In Love And Secession
8. On The Edge Of Something Beautiful
9. Dixie
10. St John's Night
Every Move A Picture sound like The Bravery. No, no, wait! Stop running! Come back! Ah shit. Must remember, good news first, bad news after.

Good news being, there isn't that much of Heart = Weapon that sounds like The Bravery. And those bits that do, particularly the opening track Mission Bell, manage to point squarely at good Bravery (i.e. An Honest Mistake) nicking the cascading synths and yearning vocal ticks, and leaving behind the naked bassist, overabundance of hype and inability to play their instruments.

Which is a bloody good job. Because frankly, there's no way we could have taken going through that again. The rest, fortunately, is far more reminiscent of a bunch of other people - from New Order to The Killers to Depeche Mode to a flushed R2-D2 being brought to the edge of ecstasy by Simon Le Bon's skillful fingers.

Basically, it's not bad. Indeed, some of it is in the vicinity of quite good: Chemical Burns has a fair stab at approximating what The Libertines would have sounded like had the good ship Albion set sail from the queue outside Studio 54 rather than some grotty flat in the east end of London, and both Simple Lessons In Love And Secession and On The Edge Of Something Beautiful (At 12am) capture an edge of euphoric desperation, a Springsteen'esque desire to escape; tramps like us, baby we were born to have fun - preferably on a beach, somewhere hot, dancing along to a punk-funk soundtrack.

Unfortunately, they don't entirely follow through on some of their promise. While the Best Is On The Outside begins with that exciting bit of android erotica, it totally peters out towards the finish, ending up a generic Franz-like bounce along and failing to bring its electronic teasing to satisfactory conclusion. Outlaw sounds suspiciously like U2 desperately trying to pretend that they're on board with this whole new-wave revival thing, and St. John's Night and Dixie both veer worrying close to the middle of the road - music for the drive-time commuter who is under the misimpression he's hip.

But basically the most grievous thing about Heart = Weapon can be illustrated by the litany of names littering the track descriptions. Every Move A Picture really don't possess much which is particularly unique. They do what they do in a perfectly accomplished way, but it lacks anything original to make it special. Which makes Heart = Weapon a diverting, rather than inspiring record.

Still, it's better than The Bravery...

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