New Stone Roses single lacks band’s original menace

Ian Brown of The Stone Roses (Pic: Frank/Flickr)

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Fans of 90s psychedelic rock band The Stone Roses have waited over twenty years for new material.

It finally arrived last week in the form of new single All For One, but blew away almost no one.

Back in the day, the Roses’ Manchester swagger was an antidote to all the carefully cultivated boy bands that dominated British pop. They were arrogant and in your face, and seemed a cut above the swathe of 60s-inspired guitar bands.

Unlike Oasis, no one was going to invite lead singer Ian Brown to meet with Tony Blair in Downing Street.

But this reincarnated Roses sounds like a pastiche of itself. It’s as though a tribute act has been hired to go through the motions.

The lyrical hook of the new single is the refrain, “If we all join hands we’ll make a wall”.

But the Summer of Love is long gone. Times are hard and getting harder for most people. Couldn’t some of the menace we associated with the “old” Roses be utilised for these new times?

If the rest of the album, threatened for release in the near future, is as weak as this I think I’d like to keep the band as a pleasant memory.