Thurman is a new English trio whose debut is full of catchy songs. This is no surprise, however, as the band has an amoral approach to songwriting: better to steal from the best than write mediocre originals. Which would be fair enough if they wanted to record a set of covers, but instead they cough up a post-modern stew of regurgitated but undigested morsels of past pop meals.
Almost every song echoes another: "Loaded" is "Children of the Revolution," "Now I'm a Man" is Double Fantasy-era John Lennon, "Clowns" veers from the opening of the Kinks' "Sunny Afternoon" through the Beach Boys and into Bowie. "Cheap Holiday" threatens to be Tears For Fears' "Seeds of Love" but turns out to be a Blur song.
Some might say that such appropriation can be justified by a number of factors: the post-modernist flair for excusing plagiarism, or the overwhelming nature of pop-consciousness, or the legacy of the British Invasion (Beat) bands' rise to prominence playing American R&B.
And it's true that many of the direct rip-offs on Lux may be unfamiliar to contemporary listeners, as the songs of Jimmy Reed were when the Rolling Stones covered them. But early Stones, Beatles, Animals, or Yardbirds albums are littered with writing credits for the original artists - every song on Lux is said to have been written by Thurman. Even the songs that don't pull a specific song title from your memory are clearly meant to sound like the various stars of current Britpop.
Put it this way: in 1966 the Knickerbockers' "Lies" was a good song, a hit, and its still fun to listen to. But the Knickerbockers will never be remembered as more than a Beatles rip-off band - aiming for success not with a musical vision but with cold calculation (even if based on genuine admiration). If Thurman is remembered, it will be in exactly such a light. With a modicum of justice, thurman actually will be remembered as "the Knickerbockers of the 90s": a definition that, like a Thurman song, has no inherent significance or content because it rests entirely on a reference to something else, lacking substance in itself.
