Everything Is Borrowed - The Streets

I've never quite understood the furore surrounding The Streets, the garage band from the UK whose vocalist Mike Skinner has an almost instantly recognisable voice due to the odd Brummy/London mixture have never really tickled my fancy. I find that Skinner's voice tends to be a bit too slow, rather than having a bit of a hip hop groove to it, it sounds like he sings every song at a spoken pace - almost as if he's based his whole career on the spoken section of Blur's "Parklife" song. In the past, the songs that I'm familiar with always had a bit of a cheeky chappy outlook to them, most of them about drugs, drink or chasing girls, on ...  Read the complete review

The Streets are a garage band fronted by the excellent Mike Skinner. This is their fourth album and is still of a high quality that you would expect however it is a little short in time which is a disappointment. he album starts with what is my favourite track, Everything is Borrowed, this is one of those songs that once you have heard it you will be tapping your feet or humming the hook for the rest of the day as it is a simple little sample that works really well against the lyrics which are all about the problems of debt. My other favourite track is The Escapist which is the final track on the album and again it has a very strong opening and ...  Read the complete review

When your first three albums have mostly been about drinking, gambling and drug taking while giving a commentary on life in urban Britain what do you do with your fourth album? Well you could do more of the same; after all why change a winning formula? Or alternatively you could go for a bit of a walk in France to get some inspiration and write about important things like the environment and the problems of debt and home repossessions. The Streets are fronted by Mike Skinner and are an urban garage band and one of my all time favourites, I'm not a big fan of rap music especially when you have UK artists putting on American accents to try and sell their music ...  Read the complete review