CD OF THE WEEK
FIONA SHEPHERD
WESTLIFE: ALLOW US TO BE FRANK ***
BMG, ?3.99
WESTLIFE ARE at a career crossroads. It is agreed that the average shelf life of a successful boy band is six years. Westlife are undeniably a successful boy band, with 34 million album sales worldwide. Each of their albums so far has gone multi-platinum in the UK. But, having milked their brand of crushingly mediocre, anachronistic, mummy’s-boy balladeering further than taste or sense should allow, they are approaching the six-year milestone, and the tell-tale cracks are beginning to show.
On their last tour, boredom was etched on the five members?faces as they hovered over the crowd on their suspended spinning podium, all rictus smiles and mechanical waving. Within the year, a key member (if it’s possible for Westlife to have key members) had departed to grow a beard and pretend to be Robbie Williams, leaving the band with a dilemma. Where do they go without chubby Brian (n?Bryan) McFadden? Straight to Vegas it appears.
Allow us to be Frank - a title which is off the scale on the naff-o-meter - is billed as Westlife’s Rat Pack album. It’s not an especially pretty prospect but, like Robbie Williams’s Swing When You’re Winning, it is the fairly jolly, finger-clicking romp you would expect. What is less expected is how suited Westlife are to the realm of the Las Vegas cocktail lounge.
Until now, this limited group have been completely lost whenever they stepped out of their dreary ballad box - remember their utterly inept cover of Uptown Girl? Or, better, don’t - but there is clearly something about donning a sharp suit, slicking back their hair and hiring a superb 60-piece orchestra to create immaculate carbon copies of songbook standards that has given Westlife a shot in the arm.
NATURALLY, IT HELPS that these are the best songs by a long shot that Westlife have ever laid their hands on. In keeping with the band’s ethos, the choice of tracks is hardly original - do we really need another teenybopper take on Mack the Knife? - but then, why uncover an obscure Sammy Davis Jr B-side when you can creamily croon When I Fall in Love? Westlife have selected 13 classics to make up their first thoroughly decent album, even if they are wearing blatantly borrowed robes.
Speaking of which, they and their stylist have had a field day raiding the dressing-up box. In one gleefully posed photo, they look like characters from a 1940s film noir, playing the archetypal loveable rogue, the hardbitten gumshoe, harassed newspaper proprietor and tough but fair police chief between them. Who knows what they would have done with McFadden? Maybe he could have played the dumb henchman.
Vocally, Westlife have never sounded better. Head choirboy Shane Filan, in particular, is a minor revelation, casting off his bumfluff mewling in favour of a ballsy American accent. Westlife are manifestly not the Rat Pack, so there is no point in being coy about the fakery. Robbie Williams faked it adequately, but Filan is surprisingly more suited to the material than Robbie ever was. By the time he released Swing When You’re Winning, Williams was practically a cartoon character whereas the mousy Filan has never previously done much more than gaze dewy-eyed into a Saturday-morning television camera. Here, he actually invests the delivery with some hitherto undisclosed personality.
Or rather, it’s persona as opposed to personality, as Westlife are mere imitators - now as always. They have spent most of their career emulating their parent-band Boyzone, which is no great test of anyone’s abilities, and have successfully coasted by for the past five years. Now they have vaulted from the ridiculous to the sublime in their attempt to pastiche real class. On Allow us to be Frank, they strive to imitate the inimitable. But at least we get to hear some terrific tunes.
The Way You Look Tonight is one of the best of these, performed as a duet with a fan who won a nationwide competition (check out the story of the talent search on the promotional tie-in television special in December, kids). The rather thin rendition of Smile is most in keeping with Westlife’s propensity for sentimental drippiness and swaying sincerely on stools, while Let There Be Love caters for their cheesier, finger-clicking tendencies. The old-fashioned romance of Moon River is let down by a feeble conventional boy band vocal. Ironically for a band built on balladeering, they fare best on the sassy numbers - Ain’t That a Kick in the Head, Fly Me to the Moon, Come Fly With Me and That’s Life are all brimming with vim.
MANY WILL REGARD this album as a work of sacrilege, and they’re probably right. But it’s not made for them. Actually, for all the sheer vanity and cynicism which saturates Westlife’s latest commercial move, it is difficult to work out whose Christmas stocking it is intended to fill. In a bid to break the six-year barrier, could these chart automatons now be targeting the dads with no taste? More likely, this project is about keeping Westlife, rather than their fans, interested.
Source: The Scotsman