The Children’s Hour – 'SOS JFK' (Rough Trade) Released 15/09/03

If proof were ever needed, this album demonstrates that there is no such thing as Good Music. Its sheer mediocrity is its best selling point, like British Sea Power but a bad way.

It joins the peculiarly affecting sub-genre of music seemingly designed to listen to as you go to bed, alongside Joni Mitchell’s Blue and most of Thrill Jockey’s roster. Indeed, for the most part, the album seems like a happy compromise between the two, but with nowhere near enough cool Chicagoan post-rock drumming. Then it gets spoilt as the band try to rock out in the way The Delgados rock out and do that annoying fractured guitar thang, often in the same song. But, uninterestingly, it’s all so inconsequential, it’s hard to get annoyed that it’s meant to sound like this. It would be much better if it was more average.