Oceansize - 'Effloresce' (Beggar's Banquet) Released 29/09/03

Seriously weighty opuses abound here; eight out of twelve tracks clock in at over five minutes, and four of them over eight minutes. So don’t come looking for short bursts of pop brilliance, in fact, don’t come looking for anything else other than a sense of musical foreboding, unsettlingly drawn-out tales of fear, bereavement and bizarrely, amputees.

Particularly un-cheery, ‘Effloresce’, for whatever that may mean, hinges itself of emo-extremo anguish and a tiresome amount of ‘poignant’ platitudes. Only on ‘One Day All This Could Be Yours’, are we provoked with a disquieting riff and title repetition reminiscent to an atmospherically disturbing dreamscape. Statements of wisdom are snipped out in ‘Remember Where You Are’; ‘don’t jeopardise what little you have / a single bite of cherry for you’, and ‘Saturday Morning Breakfast Show’ goes on for almost as long as CD:UK itself – only, of course, far less entertaining.