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Zero 7 The Garden
Atlantic / Wea
Track listing:
01 Futures
02 Throw It All Away
03 Seeing Things
04 The Pageant Of The Bizarre
05 You're My Flame
06 Left Behind
07 Today
08 This Fine Social Scene
09 Your Place
10 If I Can't Have You
11 Crosses
12 Waiting To Die
The much maligned Zero 7 are probably unworthy of their bad reputation in the indie crowd – okay, so they’re a little bland, a little dull, but they aren’t exactly James Blunt. There’s two of them, after all. But this, their fifth studio album, isn’t really going to help matters. It has the consistency of meringue: pleasantly fluffy and light, but not exactly satisfying. No wonder they’ve been nicknamed the “British Air.” But The Garden does show just how great Zero 7’s collaborators Sia Furler and Jose Gonzalez truly are. Gonzalez in particular comes off as a strong, seductive singer with a deadpan purr, especially in opener “Futures” and “Today”; what he’s doing with this jazz-punk-folk tedium is a mystery.
Part of the problem is that Zero 7 seem to be suffering from severe musical schizophrenia: one moment they’re blues (“Throw it All Away”), then folk (“Left Behind”), then warm electro soul (“The Pageant of the Bizarre”). And let’s not even start on the 5-minute-plus atrocities that are the instrumental tracks. There’s nothing here to excite, move, or stir anything more than a nice iced latte.
