The Streets - Computers and Blues (2011)

Two posts in a row, now is time for the second and last Album Review of Mike Skinner’s album with The Strets A.K.A *sigh*, this last production shows Mike Skinner at all his game, and is an album that will definitely will put a milestone on the followers of the musician. Is a look back into all the phases that Mike Skinner has in The Streets, the upbeat songs, the aggressive verses, the heartbreak and the light, also some new interesting twists.

Remember the band called The Music? Well the first single is featuring The Music’s frontman Robert Harvey, and he features in two more songs, as far as lyrics has very clever lines like “at the end of the tunnel there’s always a light….it just might be a train”, and this sort of ironic and dark analogies go around the album every once in a while, it takes things like plane life, love, technology and the internet like a truly existential theme., a reality that has became in part the centre of contemporary time. Inside Outside, the opening track sets the mood with a guitar but a lyric that doesn’t distinguish between real lives being outside or inside, “the world is outside but inside warm / inside informal outside stormy inside normal”, an invitation to join the world and escape from the fuzzy cloudy things that keep you in house without interacting.

This idea is through out the whole album, the idea of real interaction and the question of what’s real in the end, that’s why the perfect concept of the album ends up being Computers and Blues, there is nothing coming out of the left field but songs like We Can Never Be Friends have the sort of pop structures of songs that were in Everything is Borrowed and on the other hand very raw songs like A Blip On A Screen, that take a bit of the sound displayed in The Hardest Way To Make An Easy Living, in the end this really is a look back to all the trajectory of The Streets and says goodbye with a great album.

The goodbye of The Streets still has a few interesting stuff regarding on the promotional sphere, that is because Mike Skinner in the tradition of making contact with the fans using technology converted the concept of Computers and Blues an interactive self made youtube series of videos that allows the viewer to decide the steps that the story can take, making alternative ends and leading to the songs that can portray the twists the viewer is choosing. You can enjoy the interactive film below and also enjoy the video of Going Through Hell. Cheers!

Tracklist:

1. Outside Inside
2. Going Through Hell
3. Roof Of Your Car
4. Puzzled By People
5. Without Thinking
6. Blip On A Screen
7. Those That Don't Know
8. Soldiers
9. We Can Never Be Friends
10. ABC
11. OMG
12. Trying To Kill M.E.
13. Trust Me
14. Lock The Locks

Rate: 8/10

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