Make It Happen - Nizlopi Album Review

Nizlopi

Album Review

Nizlopi broke into the nation's collective consciousness for a brief moment when they nearly earned the coveted Christmas Number 1 slot with the JCB Song. An endearing animated music video, accompanied by a charming, if twee, song about Luke Concannon's miserable dyslexic school life, and subsequent emotional escapes accompanying his Dad to work briefly put folk into the charts.

Two years later, Nizlopi are ready to release their second album, 'Make It Happen', and they have gone further away from radio friendly music towards a more roots, acoustic hip-hop and festival folk vibe. The chances of them repeating the radio friendly mix of JCB song from this album are remote, though opening song 'Start Beginning' is a likely candidate, and a solid choice as their first single, with a more conventional song structure and a delightfully upbeat singalong chorus.

Armed with an acoustic guitar, an acoustic bass and occasional emotionally charged classical instrumentation, Nizlopi's charm comes from a wide eyed enthusiasm and genuine earnestness in musically expressing their belief and demand for social justice. For much of the album, the music is of a gentle protest theme and would be completely in place at many of the festivals they frequent. The sentiments are often simple and emotional, but effective, like the performances you can see in the leftfield at Glastonbury, but all too often it becomes relentlessly cloying - despite my 100% agreement behind the political and environmental issues expressed. It works best when its sing-along, simple and clear like in the acoustic rap of 'England Up Rise', a call to action saying "No" to the injustices of the world and "Yes" to the positives:

I'm saying no to global warming and to public ignoring,
No to every rain forest fucking continually falling,
No to government paid scientists who think reassuring,
Will stop us all from rising up to stop our nation from falling,
No to Mugabe, his palace in Hirari,
No to poisoning the youth with heroine and with Charlie...

It works less well in the 'Part of Me', a musically stirring piece about the fear of being gay, with its clumsy conclusion of:

And George Bush, Tony Blair, Eminem and Dr Dre,
Putin, Sarkozy and Arnold Schwarzenegger by the way,
Amy Winehouse, Margaret Thatcher and the Pope would have to say,
If they were all quite honest,
That part of them is gay,
Part of me is gay,
Part of you is gay,
Part of God is gay,
And my girlfriend by the way,
Part of her is gay...

Musically it's one of the better numbers on the album, but it sums up the feel of the sentiments that slowly wear you down, especially when they get more abstract and less protest-like, as here.

But the main issue with the album is that the three tracks I have mentioned are lost in a sea of mediocrity. It's all pleasant enough, but meanderingly forgettable in such a way that a protest album should never ever be. Gentle, mellow, but ultimately unmemorable, it's unlikely to 'Make it Happen' (neither album sales nor equality) in the way that Nizlopi seem to genuinely desire. 5 stars out of 5 for effort, enthusiasm and earnestness, but regrettably only 2 for musical merit, despite a handful of lovely stand-out moments.

Alan Martin