Saturday, 1 October 2005
Arts
Help: A Day in the Life
There's the concept, and then there's the music.
So here it is, ten years after the original War Child / Help album, a chance to try and do it again. The War Child charity believe children should never be the victims of armed conflict; the musicians believe this too, but also believe they can out-do their predecessors.
Trouble is, the only metric by which they win is the amount of recorded misery. It takes Emmanual Jal's rather remarkable track to lift it from kicking its boots in the gutter. (I wish I'd seen him at Greenbelt now.) The original Help was patchy too, but at least there was variety in there. Maybe with a few more listens I'll grow fond of this collection but right now about all I can say is I'm glad to have contributed part of my £9.99 to the charity.