I hadn’t really thought about this before but a perusal of a track listing might provide a more than insignificant clue as to the tone of an album and, with titles like “The Beginning Of The End” and “The End of The Beginning” catching my attention, it was with more than a little trepidation that I pressed the play button on “Media Hack” by The McKenzie Fix.
And so it was. These thirteen songs – it would be thirteen, wouldn’t it? – draw heavily on the days on the sweeping synth sounds of days gone by with those artificially generated sounds being determinedly haunted by the ghosts of the analogue variety. This does indeed effectively add to the downbeat vibe whilst also providing an impressively flat platform for the lyrics that, for their part, provide plenty of laconic, if always literate, insights into the motivations of Ewan McKenzie (for it is he who is The McKenzie Fix). Having listened to this album, I might even get away with suggesting that only an exorcism could remove the remnants of Britpop from him.
If you seeks something sugary and sweet then “Media Hack” won’t tantalise your tastebuds. However, if your tastes run to a cocktail of bleak indifference, angst, and retro flavoured irony then this album might just be for you. Anyway, it is hard to dislike a man who can throw lyrics like “watch the baby rabbits as much as I like” into a song and expect to get away with it. Then, as now, laconic is as laconic does.