Music review: The Courteeners - St.Jude

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t actively dislike the Courteeners. In fact, it might actually be impossible to dislike a band with a chorus that goes “What took you so long/ Was there a queue at the post office?”

However, this sound has been done, and done a lot. St. Jude has no shortage of hooks and tunes and I can see this album doing quite well in 2008, but I confidently predict that exactly no one will be listening to it in 10 years time.

The whole thing is very workmanlike. Riffs riff where you expect them to riff, choruses turn up with the volume and The Libertines’ songbook is followed to the chord. That said, St. Jude is enjoyable in small doses, and it’s also important to point out that lead singer Liam Fray delivers up the most heroically mundane lyrics in musical history; it’s refreshing hearing words such as “daft” and “rubbish” crop up in a modern rock album.

If only they were regularly applied with imagination, such as in the song “Cavorting”: “Your club is full of overrated, dehydrated goggle-eyed girls,” cries Fray. However, too often we’re treated to clumsy, blokey lyrics; if you ask me, Carl Barat and Pete Doherty have a lot of explaining to do.

• St.Jude is out NOW