Razorlight's Johnny Borrell has started off his career by boasting that he's already a better songwriter than Bob Dylan. So it would be nice to report that he's a pretentious idiot and that his band have turned out to be rubbish after all. Unfortunately, even after you've stripped away all the hype, you're still left with a viscerally exciting debut album from one of the most promising new outfits of 2004. Borrell once lived in the same squat as the Libertines and you can see plenty of musical similarities - Up All Night is mostly made up of edgy, ragged punk, with plenty of wide boy wisecracks and East End iconography. There's also echoes of the 1970s New Wave scene, with Patti Smith, Lou Reed and Television all making their influence felt, sometimes in none too subtle a manner. Overall, Borrell would be better off avoiding ridiculous arguments and working harder on developing his own voice - you get the feeling it'd be well worth hearing.
