Reviewed by Mike Rimmer

After a pretty dull live album greatest hits affair, California's Skameisters unleash a new album which sees them linking up with producers Charlie Peacock and Brent Bourgeois. Out of this rather strange partnership comes an album that continues to help the band leave their Sssouthern California ska roots behind. They create a sound which combines the energy (but with Peacock at the controls not the rawness) of earlier recordings so that they now sound uncannily like the Blues Brothers band at times. Check out "Let It Go" or "Hold Onto Jesus" for the incriminating evidence. Then "Glory Hallelujah" sounds a little like Elvis Costello's "Radio Radio". Is this a band who are running out of new ideas? Occasionally they hit it and the best moments remain when that horn section comes swooping over the horizon on songs like "Birth Of Uncool" and the frenzied "Superfly" to turn it up a notch. In the end though 'Hi-Fi Revival' is, too often, less of a genuine revival than a band treading water searching for a direction to swim before they sink.

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