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Hundred Reasons 'Shatterproof Is Not A Challenge'

added 01 March 2004 at 15.25

Signed in the brief, localised guitar frenzy of 2001, Hundred Reasons joined the likes of Hell Is For Heroes and Vendetta Red, snapped up in an attempt to tap a homegrown equivalent to US emo bands. As such, the Surrey-based quintet were one of the first acts from these shores to be tarred with the broad, muddy emo brush and once the fuss had died down you get the feeling that everyone involved must have been left wondering exactly what they'd bought.

'Shatterproof Is Not A Challenge' benefits from a shinier skin and some fancier production than the quintet's debut, but it maintains the sense of barely-reined in chaos that made 'Ideas Above Our Station' variously impenetrable and intriguing. There still aren't more than a couple of songs that'll actually make you look up from whatever you're doing -  the pulsing, sinister 'What You Get' manages it, but barely. But for anyone prepared to invest a little concentration the rewards are substantial.

There's a strange contradiction at the heart of Hundred Reasons, like an egg, cheese and chilli sandwich the various component parts seem ridiculously incompatible until you actually experience the whole. From Colin Doran's vocal, alternately nasal and threadbare, to the guitars that constantly widdle and fiddle away in the background or the rhythm section which too often taps and chimes when all logic screams for some solid slabs of fuzzy bass, 'Shatterproof Is Not A Challenge' should’nt work. And sometimes it doesn't. 'The Great Test' is a house of cards of counterintuitive, intertwining melodies that can't even be maintained across one minute 59 seconds, while elsewhere they abandon their contradictory stance entirely to become merely an average rock band on the knowingly-titled 'Pop'.

But every so often the twisted recipe book they play to throws up something of rare and confusing brilliance - 'Lullaby' is just a few fuzzy guitar twists from mundanity but in that small space it becomes, on a close reading, hugely compelling, 'Harmony' - which should be as limp and soppy as a Something Corporate ballad with it's opening "Sing this with me now/Try to harmonise this" somehow demands respect simply by taking itself so seriously while 'Truth With Elegance'' mish-mash of pace and style is inexplicably not a directionless mess. Once you accept that you're working to a slightly twisted set of laws of rhythm and melody, you can find a compelling clarity at the heart of this record. Not clear enough to champion an ailing industry to the biggest music market in the world perhaps, but more than enough to continue a lengthy tradition of eccentric English artistry. At least they've got the hair for it.

Hundred Reasons 'Shatterproof Is Not A Challenge' (Sony) Released March 1, 2004.

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