I'm Not Following You

CD Cover Edwyn Collins
Setanta / Epic

Review by Darren Gawle



I'm Not Following You ranks up there with the Yardbirds' Little Games and Roger Hodgeson's Hai-Hai as an album so bad that the mere act of listening to it embarrasses you.

Edwyn Collins is the guy who got so drunk in Paris once that he pissed his pants in front of Kate Moss and didn't even notice. So it should make sense that he probably doesn't realize what an arse he's making of himself while he croons over this collection of flaccid disco tracks. He sounds like Bowie, yes, but circa that execrable album that had "Blue Jean" on it.

The redeeming feature of this album is that it's so shite that you are guaranteed to strain yourself by laughing so hard. "No One Waved Goodbye" sounds like a Bobby Goldsboro remake of "Everybody's Talkin'" with a sample of a lost kitten trapped in a well in the background. "Seventies Night" is laugh-a-minute romp with an especially incoherent guest spot by Mark E. Smith sounding like he downed a crate of Old English 800 and spent the night in a ditch.

O.K., maybe I'm being too hard on Edwyn. At least he's a more than competent musician, playing most of the instruments on the CD himself. It's just that when he opens his mouth and out pop lines like "Women may love me, but I don't love women / At least not collectively," he blows whatever credibility he has left over from his one hit, "A Girl Like You."

I'm Not Following You is the worst album of 1997, and for all the best reasons.




First published in Drop-D Magazine on March 7, 1998

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