Beans On Toast - Fishing For A Thank You (Album Review)
Thursday, 06 December 2012
Written by Ben Bland
I cannot quite decide whether I hate Beans on Toast or really hate Beans on Toast. Whether for right and wrong I cannot help but take music quite seriously. No matter how much some bands prattle on about how, at the end of the day, they are just ordinary people doing whatever takes their fancy, in actual fact on some level they are all artists. Music is art. A great pop song is art as much as a technically proficient slice of prog metal and a haunting piece of ethereal drone. Yeah, the fact I feel I need to point it out probably makes me a pretentious bastard but for that you will get no apologies. Such a needlessly smart arse introduction has only been put to press so as to give a context to this record. After all, Beans on Toast (aka. Jay McAllister) makes music impossible to describe music as art.
Honestly, 'Fishing for a Thank You' is about as basic and trite as it is possible for music to get. Lyrically and musically it is almost a complete failure. However, this does not make 'Fishing for a Thank You' a failure of a record. Personally speaking, this is the sort of cretinous singer-songwriter record that makes me hate open mic nights with a visceral passion, but I can understand why, for some, it will make McAllister something of a hero and, when I put my mind to it I can fully understand why. See, this is a singer-songwriter who knows that they are really bad, deep down. His whole shtick is based around that fact. McAllister can barely sing, he can barely play guitar and his lyrics are just the sort of thing that drunken sixteen-year-olds think are genuinely witty and clever. What he has got going for him though is the fact that he cares about this fact so little that one cannot criticise him for its truth.
What’s the point in me banging on about how 'Dry War' is the worst attempt at a political protest song ever? What’s the point in complaining about how McAllister claims that "Stonehenge" rhymes with “Orange”? Zilch. There are plenty out there who are going to be all about this record, probably because it is proof that anyone with an acoustic guitar can put out a bloody record and get people to listen to it if they want to. It helps if they have Frank Turner as a mate to get them to open a Wembley Arena show, of course, but Beans on Toast is a champion of what it means to be a singer-songwriter. For that, I have to admit I do admire him in a fashion.
Having said that, I really do hate 'Fishing for a Thank You'.
'Fishing for a Thank You' is out now. Beans on Toast is currently on tour around the UK.
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Honestly, 'Fishing for a Thank You' is about as basic and trite as it is possible for music to get. Lyrically and musically it is almost a complete failure. However, this does not make 'Fishing for a Thank You' a failure of a record. Personally speaking, this is the sort of cretinous singer-songwriter record that makes me hate open mic nights with a visceral passion, but I can understand why, for some, it will make McAllister something of a hero and, when I put my mind to it I can fully understand why. See, this is a singer-songwriter who knows that they are really bad, deep down. His whole shtick is based around that fact. McAllister can barely sing, he can barely play guitar and his lyrics are just the sort of thing that drunken sixteen-year-olds think are genuinely witty and clever. What he has got going for him though is the fact that he cares about this fact so little that one cannot criticise him for its truth.
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