The Lathums – Stellar Cast Review

Gearing up for a third album without a second of sound worth returning to, the pressure is on for The Lathums. Their landfill-like sound, the inevitable moans and groans of men with blistering hangovers and hopes for the future with starry-eyed success in their mind, is tiresome. It was the first time, grating the second, and it sounds like round three will be no different. Stellar Cast is more of the same superfluous mediocrity which storms through the genre, taking no prisoners. Swing into action, then, it is more than The Lathums do with this latest sound dump. Matter Does Not Define is just a few months away and you would be hard-pressed to paint The Lathums as anything more than a band hoping good vibes and a primitive call and response between band and bland crowd are enough. It is not. Nor is Stellar Cast.  

Post-Artic Monkeys noise which, like all the other bands trying to retrofit Alex Turner and the gang back into their 2005 identity, is just no good. The party ended a decade ago and yet people are still ripping streamers out of their hair, mourning their youth. Take yourselves back, if you must, with Stellar Cast. A song which is as questionable as it is defiantly empty. Smell the stale ale and bitter pub stench, it is all there is for a track which may open with some instrumentally sound movements but, ultimately, falls to pieces by the end of the first chorus parade. A song of obsession with another lover, a boozed-up trip through the difficulties to piece together whether someone is a friend or foe. Ample material. Plenty of it has been made up and darted up the charts before, into the psyche of everyone lacking a Bluetooth feature in their car.  

But the times they are a-changing and for The Lathums this crossroads, the choice between sticking to their smoking guns now out of ammunition or gritting the road to newfound sound, makes no difference. They are still chasing their influences with Stellar Cast, a song where the bounce and appeal of its instrumental riffs fall to bits when you realise they are still playing dress-up as a sophisticated band. They are not doing anything out of the ordinary. Music made for those who cannot move on from the death of a genre. The issue is not the subject but the writing style. Being unable to move on from some nondescript lover is the songwriting dream, yet The Lathums cannot take it anywhere but guitar distortion, a borderline nutty dance fiasco where this energy hides a hollow core.  

Stellar Cast is a frustrating non-song. An absolutely fine example of how slick guitar work and instrumental punchiness are enough to hide the pitfalls of poor writing. Alex Moore has these stories whirring away in his mind, those emotional hangups which prove tender and, crucially, true. But there is no way of cobbling them together with a new meaning or instrumental flavour in mind. He follows the law of Turner and, along with his bandmates, comes out the other end with nothing of particular interest. Noise heard elsewhere, better, before. An album already dated and, at time of writing, not yet released. Paradoxical in most cases but for The Lathums it comes from maintaining a sound most people feel nostalgic for. You cannot survive off nostalgia, much like you cannot just eat pepperoni slices and Blu-tak. There is a sickliness to that sort of living.