Credit: Found On Internet

What’s this? A four-song album sampler? Well, to be honest, it’s just been sent to us because one of the tracks,. ‘The Quest’ is set to be released as a single next week. But we can’t help but comment on the other three tracks as well.

‘The Quest’ has been getting airplay from everyone from Jo Whiley to Terry Wogan, don’t let the MOR wasteland that those pair of taste-vaccuum represent, put you off. Lazy commentators have also been stomping around with the “the male Amy Winehouse” description, especially since he supported everyone’s favourite tabloid crackhead on tour. The organ-trumpet backing of this might be as well be an off-cut of ‘Back To Black’­, only with the smoother-than-a-shaven-stingray vocals of Bryn Christopher’s nu-soul vocals t top it off, rather than the cigarette-and-gin wracked vocal chords of Winehouse these days.

The video for ‘The Quest’:

Music Towers actually prefers ‘Help Me’. It’s like a blaxsploitation James Bond theme. He could be singing about hiring Hell’s Angels to set fire to my mother and to then throw her off a roof onto some spikes, but I couldn’t care less. This makes want to punch Blofeld in the face while rolling across the bonnet of a 1974 Mustang like some kind of svelte Starksy & Hutch-esque character.

‘Smilin’’ sounds like those colours stuck between beige and off-white in your local B&Q – it exists only to acts as a base-shade that acts to amplify the stronger colours either side. For all his vocal talents, Bryn Christopher (or whoever wrote it) needs to be sat down and have a serious talking to about the forgettable couplets wheeled out here. “There’s something going on with my brain, I’m finding it hard to explain”? Just stop it.

This last track sounds oddly familiar…our eyes dart over to the tracklist as the true horror overcomes us – it’s a cover of Portishead’s ‘Sour Times’. Only it’s truly, maddeningly, one of the ghastliest covers we’ve heard since Mark Ronson. Actually, this could be a fetid offcut of Ronson’s insipid Version album – a few up tempo beats, some superfluous chimes, horns and strings added to give it a lounge-jazz effect. As the final track on the sampler, it’s like eating a pack of Revels, only to bite into the last one and discover it’s a new surprise dogsick-and-ratshit flavour one.