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WELCOME TO THE NORTH
(Capitol)
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You almost can’t blame the Music for saddling themselves with such a stupid name: the British rock scene — so much more accelerated than ours, thanks to the relatively tiny size of the place — breeds such a culture of hype and expectation that young bands are all but forced to adopt a swagger that’s not yet theirs, as if obsolescence awaited those who don’t proclaim themselves the greatest thing since the Who, or Oasis, or Franz Ferdinand. What you can blame the Music for is making such an empty racket: like their homonymous 2003 debut, Welcome to the North is filled with economy-sized riffs in search of songs and outdated glowstick atmospherics with nowhere to party. The basic formula is Led Zeppelin plus the Chemical Brothers, and a few times (thanks in part to producer Brendan O’Brien), the band’s astoundingly dunderheaded rocktronica does yield a groove worth its considerable real estate: "Breakin’ " works up to a funky Jane’s Addiction shuffle, and "Bleed from Within" roars with tribal-rock power despite singer Robert Harvey’s nonsense about the sun "bleeding into mine eye." But mostly, Welcome offers adolescent attitude as if it were its own reward. (The Music appear this Wednesday, February 23, at the Paradise Rock Club, 967 Commonwealth Avenue in Boston; call 617-562-8800.)
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