Nizlopi - Make it Happen

Against the eclectic backdrop of guitar, double bass and beatboxing, Luke Concannon's earnestly high-pitched voice can carry some genuinely interesting pop songs. 2005's JCB Song deserved every minute of its excessive radio play, and this latest offering does yield potential hits. Over the course of Make It Happen, however, their unique but limited sound wears you down, and the weaker songs become aimless and skippable exercises in Nizlopi's narrow style of doing things. Prominent as they are, the lyrics do not help matters; the subject of which alternates rigidly between half-baked utopian politics and matters of the heart, saying little that hasn't been said before - so predictably that lines can often be guessed by choosing the closest rhyming cliché. The only exception to this rule is the attention seeking Part of Me, where they unflinchingly accuse everyone from Tony Blair to Dr Dre of sharing their homosexual tendencies. Now that probably hasn't been said before (see Eazy-E for miscellaneous Dre slander - Ed). [Shaun Love]