Real Tuesday Weld

As the Real Tuesday Weld, Stephen Coates has created a perfectly realized persona with which to deliver his songs. He sees himself as a modern day Music Hall performer, crooning smoky ballads that wouldn’t have been out of place in his beloved ’30s. He takes this a step further on The End Of The World, a supposed live album recorded at the fictional End Of The World Club in London, where a very enthusiastic audience joins him. The problem is that the fake applause, cheers and laughter become grating very quickly and while he might have been trying to do something clever, it comes across as far too precious and pretentious. And that’s a pity because these songs are stripped of many of the little tricks and samples that Coates has used on all his other records, and it turns out that he writes a decent ballad that could quite easily stand on its own. The Real Tuesday Weld gets closer and closer with each subsequent release. Maybe next time he’ll get it right.