Tom Nicholson gives a bit of a false-out to commence his second solo project under his Spacer Goes Platinum alias. Listeners are greeted with a bassline cribbed from one of the biggest U.K. hits from one of the most notorious of Mancunian indie rock-club music hybrid acts (OK, it’s The Stone Roses).
After that, the Vintage on this EP’s five songs is clearly that 1990s period of commercial alt rock ascendancy that followed the breakout of grunge and the generally less celebrated rise of nu metal. With that that in mind, Nicholson, an erstwhile member of Like Venus, proffers guitar sounds in a middle ground between jangle and scrape and earnestly, geekily sung lyrics of romantic longing, dysfunction and self-loathing with at least a whiff of irony. It's almost as if “120 Minutes” from the middle of the Clinton presidency never left MTV's schedule, and Frank Black and Rivers Cuomo are backstage ready to offer cosigns.
If Nicholson is looking for Spacer Goes Platinum to go, um, platinum, it’s not by reinventing anyone’s idea of a wheel, but for a fresh take on a sound nostalgic for many at the tail of Generation X and early into the Millennials.
