Twenty years ago, The Zutons questioned their demise on debut album Who Killed The Zutons? Two decades later and nobody has owned up to the crime – which seems redundant in hindsight as they power on through. Pulling themselves back together in the wake of a changed line-up wrought with grieving and adapting to a pandemic, The Big Decider is, as its title suggests, a big decision. But what became of the group whose best track was covered by Amy Winehouse and spun into a jazz-soul slice of perfection? Not much is the answer and The Zutons go about proving this with their creeping and lacklustre fourth album. Flickering pops at the club scene which left their music well behind marks The Big Decider as a stagnant and vaguely empty attempt at reinfiltrating the dancefloor. Creeping on the Dancefloor marks the first of nine unsuccessful attempts to do so.
The Big Decider sounds as cheap as its surefire artificial intelligence-spawned album cover, a far cry from when the work of handy artists was profiled and championed by The Zutons. Times are tough. Bashing anything into ChatGPT and filtering out the thumbless hands is a result for those pressed for time. There is a light and enjoyable funk groove to first album track proper, Pauline, but its lyrical density fails it. Falling short and providing a twenty-year look back at life and the charge of nostalgia we feel in the safety of those from our past is a lick of irony for a band whose best works were so long ago. This little number sounds like it was scraped from The League of Gentlemen as it pays tribute to someone whose presence is so powerful frontman Dave McCabe hopes to see them again… in half a century. Such a shame to use these dense, Electric Light Orchestra-adjacent bass grooves and large sound chunks on such weak material. Still, more power to McCabe for trying to hit notes he can no longer reach.
The Zutons then are left with instrumental flurries to keep them ticking over. Though it dominates the likes of Pauline it feels stagnant and added on rather than a crucial part of the encounter. Water, the saxophone-heavy punch at naturalism may as well be sliced from Talking Heads’ environmentally friendly finale, Naked. The Zutons are making some fair noise but the ideas they display on top of steady foundations are decades out of date and the band seems unable to update them with fresh perspectives – a shame too since most of the guitar work and constantly shifting influence is enjoyable. But Water soon becomes the standout rather than a sign of changing qualities as the band meddles with bold but ultimately disappointing musical waves on Disappear. Buy your ticket home and give up on your dreams, recede into the backlines of history and do no harm as the slick guitar takes over – that is The Zutons speaking clearly on the reality of most situations and the shock to the system remains with an intense and gratifying surge of instrumental wonder.
Time leaves no survivors, and The Zutons strike out against it on title track The Big Decider. Flickers of what the band was at their best – the big decisions of the here and now paired with slick instrumentals – are alive and well in spots. But the bulk of their already short project is filled with lacklustre indie-pop energy which ages their sound, the nostalgia bait and switch not overcome and an overreliance on the slick strings and wall of sound fever remains unchanged from their earliest days. There is finding a sound and sticking with it, and not scraping up the leftovers before setting the table again. The Zutons has an album which should work tremendously as a sunny and summer-ready slice of light work but it fails to leave a mark – its slippery lyrics and relatively plain results following the pursuit of loud and boisterous sound is underwhelming.
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