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Blazin' Squad - 'Let's Start Again'

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Fraser McAlpine | 11:00 UK time, Wednesday, 10 June 2009

Blazin SquadI honestly never thought I'd be reviewing a Blazin' Squad single again. Seriously: what's with everybody reforming these days? Is it the recession? Suddenly they all realise that they're skint and need a proper job (assuming being a popstar counts as a proper job, and I sincerely hope it does). More importantly, who's next? One True Voice? Vanilla? Hepburn? I MUST KNOW.

Anyway, Blazin' Squad are back - or at least some of them are, since the numbers seem to have depleted somewhat since the glory days when they were promising to see us at the crossroads crossroads crossroads. Given that they probably had a few superfluous members to start with, this trimming of the excess does make the whole shebang seem a bit more manageable.

(. Never has the sentence "let's meet at that sushi bar" gone more disastrously wrong.)

The opening seconds of the aptly-named 'Let's Start Again' are a bit misleading, because it all sounds a bit plaintive and ballady, but then the beat kicks in and we're in more familiar territory, although a bit more grown-up than they were before - which makes sense, considering how they are actually older and everything.

And the age thing is an interesting point: they got a lot of stick for their ages in their first iteration, and all of the "So Solid Juniors" jokes made it hard for them to be taken seriously. But having heard this, which does sound both more mature and slick than a lot of their previous work, it makes me wonder if taking a few years out to put some hairs on their musical chests was the best idea they've ever had.

Admittedly it lacks the brazen amazingness of 'Flip Reverse', but it feels a bit unfair to punish all subsequent Blazin' Squad releases for not being 'Flip Reverse' because nothing will ever be as good as 'Flip Reverse' no matter how hard anyone tries, but this is certainly several steps up from what I would've expected from a Blazin' comeback.

You might say that the cost of all that growing and maturity was a loss of some of the personality that gave them their appeal in the first place, and I'm not entirely sure you'd be wrong, but nonetheless if you like your R&B to show a sensitive side and with a dash of Kanye-style high-pitched vocodering for good measure, you should be very happy with this.

Four starsDownload: 15th June
CD Released: June 15th

´óÏó´«Ã½ Music page

(Steve Perkins)

"It might help that I neither know nor care much about the group's history"

PS: Blazin' Squad fans, go and see them on The 5:19 Show. Tell 'em I sent you...

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