From the sunny shores of Cornwall and the gritty smoke of Charlton, Alibi want to take you on another journey of the space variety on their new single Hyperspace Now.
The five-piece from the south of England lives and breathes Britpop with mere seconds of the opening track reminiscing that of the Oasis and slight doses of Stereophonics. Whilst the song is full of rhythmic melodies, it is really hard to overcome the try-hard effort from music, lyrics, and vocal delivery wishing they were a bonus track of Definitely Maybe.
The drums are screaming Rock N’ Roll Star, the whole Hyperspace track title speaks of Supersonic and the vocal delivery is awfully desperate to be Liam Gallagher. You could say well there are plenty of bands, especially in the north trying to be the next Oasis, which is true, but Alibi is trying to be only Oasis and not even Alibi. They can call themselves Alibi, but they aren’t hiding from what’s plainly obvious.
Whilst the guitars ring out with chunky overdriven tones with breaks between chorus and verses that prick the ears of a track that could break into an eerie disjointed direction, the overall anticipation is met with a return to stereotypical melodies.
On top of that, the mixing of the vocals is so harsh it really distracts the listener from the other contribution by the band as if the instrumentation was recorded professionally in a studio and the vocals were quickly done in a bedroom cupboard because someone couldn’t make it to the studio that day.
Clearly, for fans of this genre and especially those who cannot move on from a time period of music, Alibi is perfect for 90s music lovers. They’ve captured the ABCs of what makes a solid pop/rock song with easy-to-singalong choruses, repeating the song title post-chorus, a constant entourage of overdriven chords filling the track, and a drum beat that has a bit of speed to them to encourage the energy of the track.
This writer wishes he could advise that the vocals too fix the mold of what to anticipate and feature in Britpop by numbers, but unfortunately they feel so forced and poorly mixed, it is time to rethink.