The Wil Seabrook Band: It’s Your Life & They’re Living It For You

I half-liked some of the riffs on It’s Your Life & They’re Living It For You. That’s it. That’s the best I can do. I’ve listened and re-listened, hoping for an orchid in the swamp. But that’s the only nice thing I can say about this load of cock-rock. Fortunately, I won’t be stuck: there are plenty of things to dislike.

First, the Wil Seabrook Band really shouldn’t be this bad. A Brazilian bassist and an Israeli drummer should bring exotic musical influences. Seabrook (I refuse to call him “Wil”) majored in Women’s Studies at North Carolina. So it is staggering to discover just how formulaic their music is. Think Train covering Bon Jovi’s B-sides.

Every key change, every chord procession, every drum flourish, every guitar solo is utterly predictable. This is magpie music of the worst variety — if you’re going to pilfer from your peers, at least employ magpies with taste.

They’ve already managed to hamstring their own credibility too. The first single and album opener “It’s Your Life” has been played on the trailer to Dawson’s Creek. This has been credited as the band’s big break. No more appropriate vehicle (Frankly, I find the whole adults-pretending-to-be-kids-pretending-to-be-adults thing upsetting on a very basic level. And the blond chap’s forehead.)

Now if they were just a by-numbers rock band it wouldn’t be that bad, but there is also the painfully embarrassing “socially conscious” aspect to the band. The Dawson’s Creek sell-out and over-polished production only make this worse. Many bands do social consciousness very well. The Wil Seabrook Band does not. They are definitely at the Phil Collins “Another Day in Paradise” end of the spectrum.

Seabrook may have graduated in Women’s Studies, but he clearly just scraped by or, more likely, cheated. The condescension of “Is She Happy She’s a Girl” and “The Only Girl” is breathtaking; Emily Pankhurst’s entombed spinning can doubtless be registered on the Richter scale.

The lyrics resolutely plod along with the music. It doesn’t help that his voice is breathy, whiny, and try-hard. There are fleeting glances of insight, but that’s all they are: fleeting. Mostly it’s derivative tosh, refracted through Seabrook’s puddle-deep social consciousness. Hey, at least they rhyme.

The Dawson track, “It’s Your Life”, is the first single. It opens the album and soon sets the formula: strummed guitars, then vocals, then drum roll, then in come the guitars, then climactic, half-speed chorus. A winner every time. I can reluctantly see why it is better than the other songs on the album. The echoing guitar riff isn’t bad, and the verse has some urgency about it. Chorus is crap though.

“Lost” stolidly follows the opener’s lead and it’s all pretty much downhill from there on in. “I’ll Fight for You” is definitely my favourite track on the album. It makes me laugh every time. Every fibre of this song oozes preposterousness. Real lighters-in-the-air stuff. “Slow Ache” is almost salvaged by a proto-metal rock out as it mercifully draws to a close, but “Say”, a piano-driven ballad, refuses to compromise.

It’s Your Life & They’re Living It For You feels dated before it is even released. This is not a symptom of a band looking to achieve retro appeal, but rather the result of an aimlessness and lack of imagination. The Wil Seabrook Band are timeless in a bad way — they are not of their own time, stuck in a bad rock limbo. The thought of this lot fulfilling their obvious stadium ambitions is chilling; the worry is that their very mediocrity might get them there.