EDITOR’S NOTE: This album was so bad that we felt compelled to warn you all!

You know sometimes when you overanalyse things when you should have just trusted your instinct? My instinct when I got this new album from the Rogue Traders to review was to draw a big circle around the track entitled I Never Liked You and to post it back by return. Instead I overanalysed: I put it on.

Well, that’s 48 minutes and 15 seconds of my life I won’t get back again. And while I’m adding up the bill, there was another 2 minutes and 19 seconds of my life I spent reading the band’s bio. I’m pretty sure I won’t get back again, either.

To be fair, though, the bio was very helpful in assisting me to understand those more complex nuances of the record that had might otherwise have eluded me. “Two of the songs even have orchestral strings!”, it breathlessly coos. Orchestral strings? Oh, really? There was I thinking the strings cowering in the back of What You’re On and The Price We Pay might have been the kind you get on teabags. But if they are orchestral, I suppose that’s alright, then.

Plus, the bio had this gem of a quote from lead singer Natalie Bassingthwaighte: “The fans get dressed up in my costumes, which adds to the whole fun element of the show.” I would have thought it added to that element of the show which suggested that the Rogue Traders tended to attract fans who were Not Quite Right in the Head. However, that’s enough of poking fun at the appalling bio, let’s go back to poking fun at this appalling album.

I hesitate to describe this music as ‘electro-pop’, as other reviewers have, for two reasons. Firstly, because I’m afraid of being spat at in the street by purists who object to me using ‘electro’ in this context, and secondly, because I’m afraid of being spat at in the street by non-purists who object to me using ‘pop’ in this context. Pop music doesn’t have to be learned, but it should be fun. This is just dreary and monotonous.

Replicating the same unimaginative guitar line three times, each time with more distortion than the time before, doesn’t qualify as three different musical ideas. It barely qualifies as one. And oh, look, your synthesiser has that setting that allows you to make a bass line that goes ‘blarp blarp blarp’. We already know that from the last song. What else have you got?

Well they have got singer Natalie Bassingthwaighte, who, when she is not trying to retrieve her costumes from the numpties in the front row, swoops, squeaks, screeches and purrs her way through the album (well, it’s kind of a purr; the kind that makes you say, “Quick, honey, the cat needs more Ventolin”). In fact Natalie often manages to work a swoop, a squeak, a screech and a purr into the same phrase. Overacting doesn’t begin to describe it; you know those rave flyers you see sometimes that use 13 fonts in 11 colours and 9 type sizes on one A5 flyer? That’s the best way I can describe it to you. It’s the vocal equivalent of that.

Mind you, she’s not well served by the lyrics she has to get out. After listening to the way that the opening “verse” of I Never Liked You rhymes “dress” with “less” with “confess”, I was reaching for a cold compress. Eight Wonder of The World informs me that “the best weapon you can take is a gun that won’t fire”, which sounds like a rejected line from an erectile dysfunction jingle. And Calling All Lovers urges us “to gather up the storm clouds in your loving arms”, which, frankly, is meteorologically impractical. And as for the current single, Don’t You Wanna Feel; not nauseous I don’t, no. But thanks for asking.

I always to try to find at least one positive in every review, though, and the positive in this album is that I have been positively reminded to avoid commercial radio over summer, because this dross will no doubt be all over it. Also, Throw Your Arms Around Me, which I feared was going to be an execrable cover of the Hunters & Collectors classic, is merely an execrable original, so that’s a positive, I suppose.

So don’t hate the Rogue Traders because they are popular and successful, hate them because they are truly naff. Better in the Dark?. Better when you’re deaf.