The Hoosiers: 'The Trick To Life'

Anyone who managed to sit through the whole of Radio 1's recent 40th birthday compilation CD will no doubt tell you how nauseatingly bad a cover version can be. Mika massacring The Police, The Feeling butchering Carly Simon, Robbie Williams gurning his way around The Kink's 'Lola'...the list goes on. Yet despite all of these musical crimes, there is one step lower than cringe-inducing musical re-interpretations of iconic hit singles. That lowly step is when you find a band who are not only willing to pillage and poke through pop history, but who also have the guts to re-package it under a different name and proclaim it as something fresh and original. Perky 'oddball' rockers The Hoosiers are such a band. Their debut album The Trick To Life is the result.

ELO, 10CC, Supertramp, The Cure, even Razorlight... just a few names who are given The Hoosiers treatment. You'll recognise the key changes, smell a whiff of their riffs and spot a cheeky glint in Irwin Sparkes' eye as he delivers his elaborate falsetto vocals, but their charm offensive begins grating your ear drums after about 30 seconds of opening track 'Worried About Ray'. Half the problem with The Hoosiers is that their 'influences' are about as corny and cheese-stinkingly addictive as any reasonable human being should surely be able to stand. You wouldn't think that ELO's 'Mr Blue Sky' could become more chiseled in its shiny pop gleam, yet somehow The Hoosiers savage the track on 'Goodbye Mr A', with their bubblegum, cartoon rock ladling on the cheese like a nightmarish school dinnerlady. Similarly on 'Cops And Robbers' they waddle through 'Love Cats' by The Cure, nicking its funky bass flicks, hurling in a bucketful of screeching snyths, and Sparkes unwisely doles out another helping of his nasal vocals on top.

The short, sharp guitar snatches on 'Worst Case Scenario' recall Razorlight's more recent singles, but again Sparkes' tendency to throw himself headfirst into the track, like a child on a first visit to water-park, gives a sickening flavour to the tune. Fairground rides, children's TV show themes, chocolate bar adverts, ice cream van tunes all sound like jolly good fun, but when they are shoe-horned into 3-minute snippets the resulting effect is not too dissimilar to eating a three day-old kebab that's been left festering under your bed: it leaves you feeling a bit dickey. Jaunty, ostentatious, and with forced grins on their faces, The Hoosiers come across like a stage school indie band. The Hoosiers are faintly reminiscent of The Office's David Brent - keen to rock out with the kids and show they're down with the hip cats, but their forced fun and unrelenting enthusiasm for the task in hand leaves you covering your eyes with your hands. Or maybe more accurately, covering your ears with your hands, because it's all too God-awful to listen to.

It's hard to take The Hoosiers seriously, yet at times they appear to yearn for some sense of credibility. They could be perhaps be forgiven as being over-eager, scarily happy wannabes if they didn't stray into furrowed brow serious mode on various occasions. Sparkes' hollering on 'Money To Be Made' and 'Run Rabbit Run' sounds like it wants to be bunched up with Jeff Buckley as Sparkes' warbles and quivers try to regain a modicum of calm amongst the sherbet lemon pop hooks and shrill squeals of their up-tempo numbers. However, there's a soulessness to his voice that you'd imagine isn't a million miles away from hearing George Bush singing along with the lyrics to 'Imagine' or 'Give Peace A Chance'. The band have cornered a huge market with their quirky schtick already, so the album's certainly going to have its fans. What's less certain is if any will be proudly holding the record aloft in their music collections in five years' time - or even six months!