Archive - Live At Le Nuits Botanique (i-Tunes) Released 13/12/05

 

Archive, on record, occupy a middle ground between the proggy landscapes of Pink Floyd, the 3am smoke-filled trip-hop and jazz clubs of mid 90’s Bristol and the harsher industrial sounds of The Prodigy and nu-breaks.  The addition of female vocals and songwriter Craig Walker gave Archive a more guitar-led, song-orientated sound, which is what we got here on this selection of electric and acoustic performances.

 

But, once we wipe the mist of sympathy from our rose-tinted glasses, it’s not hard to see this music for what it really is: awfully dated and devoid of genuine artistic spark. ‘You Make Me Feel’ sounds like a half-arsed Norman Cook-on-Ketamine remix of Evanescence while ‘Numb’ evokes traumatic memories of the desperate rock-rave fusion of Apollo 440.  The bulk of the album is made up of acoustic performances which, while adequately performed, lay the lyrics painfully exposed to the critical firing squad.  ‘Pulse’ is almost like a sixth-form version of Faithless’s ‘I Want My Family Back’, with such feelings of alienation being expressed in clumsy lines such as ‘In this junk I’m drowning/How long ‘til I see my mother?’ and ‘Now the thought police follow me everywhere I go/Eyes are on your children’.  Wow, it's like a modern day Orwell...   

 

Negativity beats away at the listener through these drudging, sullen songs like rain on a call-centre window, until - hang on - it’s ok, they didn’t mean it after all!  For on ‘Hate’ – a song where Craig lunges gracefully at his opponent with the Wildean put-down ‘I hate your face right now/I can’t stand the sight of you’ – they turn it all on its head with the closing refrain, ‘Don’t believe a word I say… ’.  Is it a cop out or a touching admission of weakness?  Well, frankly, it could be be either – it certainly hasn’t been much fun finding out.