The Singles Jukebox

A generation held its breath.

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[4.75]Katie Gill: The lyrics are terrible. The melody is basic. But oh my god, there is some wonderful guitar work in this song. John Squire plays the hell out of that opening riff and that other riff near the end is a thing of beauty. At least it’ll earn the band some money when it inevitably shows up on Guitar Hero a few years in the future.
[6]

Cassy Gress: This belongs on a classic ’90s movie soundtrack or as a segue on Daria. It needs a flannel shirt tied around its waist and a backwards cap. Can we go back in time and put it there?
[7]

Alex Ostroff: Oh hey! It’s that band from Louis Tomlinson’s T-shirts. I was slightly too young for The Stones Roses the first time around. The lyrical platitudes are wallpaper, but they’ve got some good jangle for Brits, and out of today’s “Guess Who’s Back? Back Again” slate, these lot are the only ones who really have a pulse.
[5]

Will Adams: “All for one, and one for all/If we all join hands we’ll make a wall.” Since the USA Freedom Kids never took off as expected, maybe Donald Trump should call up these blokes for the convention in July.
[3]

Alfred Soto: Gone all these years and all they’ve got are plodding beats and a line about joining hands? Who bloody cares?
[1]

Edward Okulicz: Nice riff, pleasing jangle, not a lot more. And the lyrics! Oh my. Holding hands and building walls — did they decide to write a campaign song for the US election and hedge their bets between Sanders and Trump?
[4]

Iain Mew: I recently watched Studio Ghibli’s 1986 début, fantasy Laputa: Castle in the Sky, for the first time. I had an overwhelming realisation that I was finally seeing something clearly that I’d already loved all kinds of reflections and refractions of, and that doing so satisfyingly tied those together. As someone who got into new music at the arse end of Britpop, listening to The Stone Roses ten years ago provided a similar experience. Studio Ghibli went on to evolve and diversify, and seeing their modern films I don’t think of Final Fantasy or Fez or anything else that took after Laputa, but The Stone Roses have been rather less prolific. The result is that if they want to be recognisably The Stone Roses, they’re on ground which has been taken over in their absence, and “All for One” reminds me of their successors than their own material. Principally, John Squire’s fluid variations on the theme of jangle remind me of those of Adam Devlin of The Bluetones, who (to be reductive) spent their early days as The Stone Roses minus the swagger. They were also one of my favourite bands, and so I get a peculiar circular nostalgia from the way “All for One” is filled with the same kind of bubbling sweetness. It just about wins the fight against the vocals and lyrics being more Oasis, i.e. The Stone Roses minus the magic.
[6]

Brad Shoup: It’s got the lilt of top-form Rolling Stones, the cheeriness of sunshine pop, and a production that suggests approaching the festival stage from behind. They did it!
[6]