Album Review: Night Works - Urban Heat Island

Your Twenties and ex-Metronomy multi-instrumentalist, Gabriel Stebbing has taken a few years to get his debut solo album released, having left his previous band in 2009, and adopting the moniker of Night Works under which to release it. Sadly, it seems he should have taken a little more time, preferably to re-think releasing it at all.

Urban Heat Island could easily be a reject from the 1980s, overflowing with bad lyrics, second-rate melodies and some painfully dodgy keyboard goings on. To make matters worse, it's played out in an unholy amalgamation of R&B and electronica. The whole thing is on a slippery slope from the start, courtesy of a keyboard-heavy intro to Boys Born In Confident Times that is not too dissimilar to a bad ringtone. From there, Stebbing takes us on a very long journey through very middle-of-the-road sounds and it's all you can do to stop imagining him in a pastel-coloured, shoulder-padded, double-breasted suit in a really bad '80s band.

Despite all efforts to enjoy Urban Heat Island, there really is nothing to enjoy here. It doesn't even fall into the “so bad it's good” category. Just when you think things can't get worse, along comes Share The Weather, which happens to contain one of the worst examples of rapping that is your misfortune to hear. Compounding the problem is that it is completely out of keeping with the rest of the song.

An honest attempt was made to find Urban Heat Island a good album, yet with only one salvageable positive quality – the female backing vocals on Nathaniel – to be found, all that there is left to say is that it is a pity that once something has been heard, you can't un-hear it.