On the Outside专辑介绍
by Stephen Thomas Erlewine
Good reviews can kill a band, particularly if they arrive before they've ever released a record. That essentially happened to Symposium, who was labeled the "best live band in Britain" by the weeklies at the tail end of Britpop -- the handful of days before OK Computer and Urban Hymns replaced Parklife and (What's the Story) Morning Glory? as the template for modern British pop. Symposium's traditional punk-pop, filled with buzzy chords and chant-along hooks, must have seemed like a logical progression in lad-rock, but a funny thing happened -- the new seriousness came along, wiping them off the front pages of Melody Maker and NME. Where to turn but America, where punk-pop was popularized by Green Day? Of course, by the time the band's full-length debut On the Outside was released, punk-pop was passé. All of this wouldn't matter if Symposium didn't seem like a band inextricably tied to their times. Unlike Ash, the teenage … » Read more
Good reviews can kill a band, particularly if they arrive before they've ever released a record. That essentially happened to Symposium, who was labeled the "best live band in Britain" by the weeklies at the tail end of Britpop -- the handful of days before OK Computer and Urban Hymns replaced Parklife and (What's the Story) Morning Glory? as the template for modern British pop. Symposium's traditional punk-pop, filled with buzzy chords and chant-along hooks, must have seemed like a logical progression in lad-rock, but a funny thing happened -- the new seriousness came along, wiping them off the front pages of Melody Maker and NME. Where to turn but America, where punk-pop was popularized by Green Day? Of course, by the time the band's full-length debut On the Outside was released, punk-pop was passé. All of this wouldn't matter if Symposium didn't seem like a band inextricably tied to their times. Unlike Ash, the teenage … » Read more