NO CHANGE OF SCENE

Nineties band return with much of the same.

Location: O2 Academy - Bournemouth 3/2/2010

Published: 5th February 2010

Five top ten albums, six top ten singles and twenty years since they signed to their first record label. Ocean Colour Scene celebrated their golden years back in the late nineties and their weekly snippets from The Riverboat Song on TFI Friday probably didn't do their career any harm either.

Back then Chris Evans basically pioneered not only the entertainment world but also influenced the music industry playing his favourite bands on his morning radio show and having them perform on his weekly television programme. It was Evans who decided that the OCS track, 'Riverboat Song' should welcome each guest before they were interviewed on TFI.

Chris may now be enjoying his new lease of life, his ginger curls have straighten to grey middle-aged hairs, his anarchic personality has been almost ironed out to satisfy his new Radio 2 morning listeners yet he his turn of direction has enabled him to climb back towards the top of the entertainment chain.

Maybe a diversion was also called for Ocean Colour Scene? Starting tonight with a track from their forthcoming ninth album 'Saturday', Mrs Maylie is a brilliant track it sounds lay parallel to their hits of yesteryear, but here lies the problem. It's too similar.

Is this a bad thing? It could be should the five members wish to break back onto today’s music scene and make a cracking dent into today’s download iTune age, but they don't. They've been there, bought the T-Shirt and made their footprints years before the word 'Carbon' pre-emptied such an innocent word. They are a group of middle-aged lads who enjoy making music and bloody good music at that!

Will their latest single 'Magic Carpet Days' sail above the young heads of JLS, the grime sounds of Dizzee and fasten buttons on whatever the GaGa picks out of her ecstasy over-dose of a wardrobe in the mornings? No, course it won’t, but it doesn't matter.

When we hear the classics such as Profit in Peace and Better Day we are encapsulated back to the era which we will remind us when we tell our grandchildren about 'The good old days when music consisted of proper folk playing decent tunes'. Trouble is words of such personal value already make us seem outside of a circle ourselves.

Lead singer Simon Fowler is also noticing the difference although not in a music sense, but in architecture of all places. The Birmingham lad tells us how much the South coast has changed and points us in the direction of Sandbanks, a local seaside town home to millionaires which, according to Simon, has a house made out of sweets. Although our Google search found no indication of such building we wouldn't bet against such a foolish purchase. This is 2010 after all where technology and sanitary has risen to foreseeable mid-bogging levels.

Life was simpler back in the nineties. Maybe OCS have a point; is there really any need to change with society even if it means added exposure in today’s celebrity world we live in which used to be confined to the famous just being interviewed on a Friday night chat show?