Sleepwalking

With an unchanged lineup and for part of the time the same producer, Pat Collier, Kingmaker took things to a more impressive level on Sleepwalking, the brash and well-intentioned Eat Yourself Whole days giving way, just a little, to a more impressive, edgier effort. It's a matter of degrees, admittedly — Hardy is still addicted to some fairly abysmal rhymes at points, while his voice remains unchanged outside of a rougher bark here and there, which doesn't always serve him well. However, the music as a whole gels a bit better this time and, while Hardy found his thunder completely stolen soon after by Oasis, whose Jam/Smiths worship was transformed into something truly spectacular, on balance Sleepwalking is a much more enjoyable listen in the end than Kingmaker's debut. The Howell/Andrew rhythm team comes a little more into its own, Andrew in particular building on the occasional flash and flair he demonstrated in earlier recordings, while Hardy's guitar work is much more direct and slashing, even at the band's jauntier moments. Meanwhile, some of the guest performers do their best to make Sleepwalking a downright lush experience at points — James Taylor (the English keyboardist, not the American easy listening guy) adds keyboards on a number of songs, while Anne Dudley adds a low-key string arrangement to "Tomorrow's World." Even the obvious genre exercises — the ska-tinged "Queen Jane," the overt Spector drama of "Help Yourself," the glammed-up strut "Ten Years Asleep" — are good fun. Still, though, somebody needed to tell Hardy to drop the obvious pop culture references used as metaphor — "With his macho pressgang crowd/Belsen would be his EuroDisney" is pure pain, and merely one poor example of many.