Stereophonics: Performance & Cocktails : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Seems it was only yesterday when every Brit band sounded like Oasis. Then they all turned to Radiohead. Now there's Stereophonics, who sound like Oasis trying to be Radiohead. This Welsh power trio delivers the instantly comprehensible, inherently nostalgic rockin' pop tunes of the brothers Gallagher while piling on the heavy guitars and vocal angst of Thom Yorke. Their second CD packs a few secondhand pleasures: Once you get past the initial ham-fisted, noisy bits, Performance and Cocktails settles into comfortably passionate rock melodicism. Songs of suicidal strippers ("She Takes Her Clothes Off") and homicidal hitchhikers ("I Stopped to Fill My Car Up") get the job done with appropriately downbeat catchiness. But does America need a dumbed-down Radiohead with Oasis bravado? Stereophonics are as useful as a fake-plastic wonderwall. (RS 822)

BARRY WALTERS