aKING - Against All Odds

I wouldn't want to fall into that mean trap, but I have to say: while there's a place for aKing's cleverly contemporary sound, it would be so much more instantly appealing without the pompous pop overlay.

The pompous pop tag might be a little harsh, but come on - can't we have one light moment on an album, just to relieve the terrible seriousness of it all? In the title track, "Against All Odds", aKing sing about being "zealously juvenile", but pledge that "an old-fashioned raucous promise nestles beneath the bravado." And it does, but nestling isn't enough - there comes a time when you have to uithaal and wys. Where's the dangerous edge, the step into the abyss, the call to live fast and die young?

There's a moment when the cleverly titled "Face-Brick Constellations" begins, with its country-like guitar and rollicking beat, when you feel that aKing are going to kick it up a notch, and then some heavy-handed lyrics, with their over-enunciated, spoken word delivery, impose a layer of unnatural seriousness that overrides the song's promise. It's still got enough going on to make a nightclub rock, but it's not going to survive heavy rotation on my iPod playlist.

A lot of the album is like that, and with a band that relies on the power of words, it might not be out of line to suggest the services of an editor (and a copy editor - if you're going to print all your lyrics, it's probably best not to reproduce all your spelling mistakes). In truth, lyricist Hunter Kennedy appears to be entirely aware of these issues, if his words are anything to go by. And really, what else do we have. So on "The Heart of a Fool", Laudo Liebenberg sings that "it's quite hard letting parts of yourself go… /I know my language has always been my limit… /the heart of the fool lives inside of his mouth." It's a good line, and it'll make you listen to aKing with a more sympathetic ear.

I do love words, but there's a fine line, a hairline crack almost, between beautiful lyrics and actual poetry. When Alice says to Humpty Dumpty, "The question is, whether you CAN make words mean so many different things," he answers: "The question is, which is to be master - that's all." And once they've broken it, all aKing's men can't put Humpty's dictum back together again.

The music doesn't seem to be the master of the words, on some of these songs. It's a question of coherence, and of wanting songs that have simple messages. "Anything too dumb to be spoken should be sung", sings Laudo on "Know Your Bones", the last track, and one that goes a long way towards rescuing the album. "A song is never finished, only abandoned / sing if you've got nothing to say."

It's a fantastically clever song, a danceable, confident meditation on the creative process, on the courage it takes to put out a creative product, and on the relationship between work in progress and its reluctant endpoint. Or it could be about love, I guess. And that's what makes it a good song, that uncertainty. It's not about being obscure, it's about giving your listeners a range of meanings with which to work.

It's hard to draw a line under a review like this. I'm listening to "The Heart of a Fool" again, and it's a song that moves me, in the same way that "I Believe" from Dutch Courage moves me. As with their first album, this one is what the Channel24 music editor refers to as 'a grower.' The more I listen to it, the more I like it, but that affection isn't enough to turn Against All Odds from average into essential.