Album: Toploader

Magic Hotel, Sony S

Few Britpop bands have been quite as successful over the past couple of years as Toploader; but while a million and a half sales of their debut album offers a fairly persuasive argument about their popularity, the supposed charms of Eastbourne's finest still elude me. Like McAlmont & Butler, their style draws mostly on Sixties soul influences, with the single "Time of My Life" built on a pumping groove in best Motown manner, and Joseph Washburn's organ on "Lady Let Me Shine" harking back to the Brit-blues of "St James Infirmary" and "House of the Rising Sun". But there's little comparable conviction to the performances, or to Washburn's affected transatlantic whine, which grows increasingly irritating the deeper into the album one delves. His songwriting, too, becomes less convincing the further he strays from superficial singalongs like "Time of My Life" and "Stupid Games" – before long, he's inexcusably rhyming "itchin'" with "kitchen" in "Midas Touch", and chasing his tail most confusingly through the convoluted metaphor of "Promised Tide": "I will sail upon this promised tide for days," he sings, "but the promised tide may lie about the promises it made." Eh? As with Onka's Big Moka, the band's original material is shamed by the album's lone cover – in this case a version of the Blow Monkeys' "Some Kind of Wonderful" treated to an appealing boogie slouch. The rest of Magic Hotel, though, is energetic but empty.