Tracks

1. Cash Machine

2. Middle Eastern Holiday

3. Tied Up Too Tight

4. Gotta Reason

5. Hard To Beat

6. Unnecessary Trouble

7. Move On Now

8. Better Do Better

9. Feltham Is Singing Out

10. Living For The Weekend

11. Stars Of Cctv

Performer Notes

Personnel: Nick Etwell (trumpet).
Audio Mixers: Wolsey White; Richard Archer.
Recording information: The Cherry Lips Hits Facility, Staines, West London.
Photographer: Ray Kilpatrick.
England's Hard-Fi are yet another in a long line of early-2000s bands inflated to heroic proportions by the U.K. press. Like Franz Ferdinand, the Kaiser Chiefs, and the Arctic Monkeys before them, Hard-Fi's sound is steeped in angular guitars, hook-heavy melodies, and push-and-pull dance rhythms. But while it's tempting to dismiss the band as the mere product of hype, overlooking them would be a mistake.
Stylish, slinky, edgy, and given to anthemic choruses, the band drinks from the same post-punk wellspring as many of their contemporaries; in particular, it sounds like Hard-Fi listened to the Clash's COMBAT ROCK about fifty thousand times. But that's not a bad thing, and these lads synthesize their influences in an intriguing way, offering up loping punk-boogie ("Cash Machine"), swirling disco ("Hard to Beat"), and
emotive balladry ("Move On Now") with aplomb. In short, the band's debut, STARS OF CCTV--its overhyped nature notwithstanding--is full of pop delights.

Professional Reviews

Rolling Stone (p.64) - 3 stars out of 5 -- "Their Clash-inspired punk funk bites music ideas from the Special and the Happy Mondays, but singer Richard Archer gets his songs from street life, dead-end jobs, run-ins with the law."