Anyone
Anyone
Roadrunner
The impressively fine-cropped facial hair and the enormous amount of breasts and Buddhist tourist souvenirs that grace this cover make for a confused first-meeting with nu-glam outfit Anyone. And confusion, it seems, don’t wear off too easily – this is a strange semi-hybrid of everything from glorious Marc Bolan to ridiculous Limp Bizkit. And with a hugely varying degree of success.
When it works, such as on opener “Giving Thrills” and the great, dumb rock of “Lazy Hazy,” it is at times reminiscent of Suede’s Bowie revisits, only filtered through Korn’s set-up. When it falls through – try “Fly” if you’re curious, for whatever reason – they sound like sub-standard Limp Bizkit, which is a very horrible prospect indeed. Far too all-encompassing for its own good, Anyone may have bitten over more than they can chew, and clocking in at over an hour, the album contains a few too many fillers and one idea too many that just doesn’t fit in.
Main man Riz Story, however – who sings, plays guitars and writes the stuff – is super-talented, and has a brilliantly engaging star persona about him that draws the listener in, even on the more tedious tracks. Once they establish a stronger idea of what they’re trying to do – and hopefully what they’re trying to do is not the sub-Limp Bizkit thing – they should be able to take it to the next level. There’s a great album somewhere in all this.
Roadrunner Records: http://www.roadrun.com
