Embrace - 'This New Day' (Independiente) Released 27/03/06

If you’ve ever used the touch-screen jobpoints at the jobcentre, then you’ll know that the same shitty opportunities always pop up working for companies like McDonalds, Topman, ASDA et al. Anyone with a bit of memory and an interest in music will notice the same happens with bands. You always get a pool of them that float about just being there and not much else. Coldplay, Starsailor, Keane and Embrace fit into this category. They create big production, big gig guitar music that’s ideal for bland big budget Hollywood blockbusters and people who don’t want to be vexed or challenged by music.

Its Arga using, Volvo driving, tree-lined suburb music that isn’t even worthy of dissection. Its for dads trying to recapture glory days; it’s for mums who once fancied a bit of longhair love action but never got the chance; it’s a safe bet, it’s a suitable LP to play while your kids are running about the house because you know they won’t stop and start questioning the abrasive lyrics or diabolical guitar riffs because there are none, its ****ing goat’s cheese.

Unlike the jobcentre, music gives you a choice.  It offers you a mars bar if you want it but it also waggles a Drifter or Curly Wurly in your face. Embrace are nowhere near a Curly Wurly nor a mars bar. They are Bournville. No one buys Bournville except for people in prison.

‘This New Day’ is Radio 1 drivetime horse-feed from start to end. Embrace have always been poor, just like Jo Whiley’s judgment when she first started spouting baffling promotional crap about them in the 90’s. Fair enough, they’ve got the gonads to carry on regardless but it’s clear that music is at the bottom of their to-do list.

‘I’d always felt I was about 20 feet from the fire, this time round I’m standing right in the middle of it’ blurts wobbly voiced Danny McNamara. ****ing right you are. Burn.