Rat Boy - 'Scum' Album Review

Rat Boy – ‘Scum’

Jordan Cardy, aka Rat Boy, has been one of the leading emerging indie talents for the past few years now. His cheeky, quintessentially British lyrics depicting dodgy nights out, being constantly skint and being fired from Wetherspoons have appealed to the mass majority of indie millennial’s with his popularity growing hugely to the point in which Kendrick Lamar sampled one of Cardy’s songs on his latest album ‘Damn’. Fans of Rat Boy have been eagerly anticipating this debut effort for a long time now, but I for one have always been wary. Cardy’s music has the knack of teetering between weirdly brilliant to clichéd efforts that simply try too hard, maybe Cardy could prove me wrong on this full debut studio album.

From first listen, Cardy’s influences are extremely transparent; ‘I’ll Be Waiting’ is pure Blur dreamy brit-pop, ‘Sign On’ is ‘Panic Prevention’ era Jamie T and the interludes are seemingly straight out of GTA radio stations. Despite these clear influences, Cardy has actually managed to incorporate his own unique individuality onto this record in order to create a sound that is difficult to pinpoint. ‘Move’ incorporates Beastie Boy weirdness with funky disco like beats, ‘Laidback’ is a groovy romantic ballad and ‘Boiling Point’ is somewhat hard rock. On ‘Scum’ Rat Boy has surprisingly managed to mould a distinctly individual persona and sound that is unlike anything that is out there at the minute.

‘Scum’ is not perfect though; there are a number of scratches on this record. For one, it’s far too long, 25 tracks (including 8 interludes) seems a little bit excessive. Also, the lyrics on a few of the tracks are rather simplistic; you could argue that at least 4 or 5 tracks on this album could’ve been deleted. As well as this, 9 out of the 25 record were previously released on mixtapes, EP’s and singles, so there is little that we have not already heard on ‘Scum’. This tactic seems to be used by a large number of up-and-coming artists of late and I for one am certainly not a fan of it.

I have to admit; before I listened to ‘Scum’ I was ready to hate it. I hadn’t been a huge fan of the previously released songs and I found them a little too simplistic, yet, when this record is listened to chronologically it all seems to come together. A congealed weird life form that has a huge number of plus points, especially for a debut record.

Overall Rating – 7/10

Fave Tracks – ‘Get Over It’, ‘Laidback’, ‘Turn Round M8’, ‘I’ll Be Waiting’, 

‘Left 4 Dead’, ‘Scum’

Least Fave Tracks – ‘Sign On’, ‘Boiling Point’, ‘Everyday’, ‘Kicked Outta School’