Sometime in the past 12 months Razorlight’s Johnny Borrell took a long, unflinching look at himself in a mirror and saw Pete Doherty staring back. From such moments of clarity are great pop makeovers forged. No longer content to hawk pretty-boy Oasis pastiches, the sulky-looking Muswell Hill-ian, who embodies Razorlight even if he doesn’t write all of the music, has junked the bad-boy patois and cultivated his inner Bacharach.
Softly spoken and tearful about the eyes, the new Borrell (and hence, the new Razorlight) is, intermittently, a joy. So much so that one feels almost a churl for pointing out that, to an overwhelming degree, the band appear to have cadged their latest moves from the tail end of The Verve.
Beginning with a croon, closing with a sigh, Razorlight is a story of minor triumphs and quiet disappointments. Only intermittently does the record threaten to regress towards guitar anthemics. Mostly Borrell and the troops investigate brittle piano ballads: ‘Can’t Stop This Feeling I’ve Got’ and ‘America’ ride a delicate piano line; ‘In The Morning’ and ‘Who Needs Love’ are just Borrell, a plaintive guitar shuffle and a bare-boned melody.
Having enjoyed a career-making turn at Live8 in 2005, one imagines Razorlight sat down to write something in a Coldplay vein yet could not get away from the sneering voices in their heads: even in its (many) sombre moments, Razorlight is not so much earnest as cutting.
Judging by his lyrics, Borrell has certainly sustained a few emotional bruises since last we heard from him. In a voice somewhere between a shriek and a sob – at moments, it sounds as though he’s been gargling glass – he declares he has given up on love and asks to be left alone by the entire world. Introversion suits him. Out of the stuff of their singer’s pain, Razorlight have crafted one of the year’s most compelling comedown suites.