Sadly, they haven't got any prettier over the years. But they have got a lot less hair.

"Why" is the word that occurs most frequently when we hear these Glasgow white boys trying to get down and dirty with soul.

Why do you think anyone would take this seriously?

Why are you doing this?

Why would anyone pay for this second rate pap?

Why don't we just take this wee CD, break it in two, and put it in the bin?

Whew that's better. There really is something excrutiatingly, painfully, teeth grindingly bloody annoying about Hue and Cry. Put aside for one moment the pretentious guff that Pat Kane, the elder of the two brothers that comprise Hue and Cry spouts, because we'll turn to that later.

Put that aside and concentrate on the music. Listen very, very hard. As hard as you can. Blot out everything in the room. Turn the volume up. Concentrate. Can you hear it? The sound of originality? No, neither did we.

OK, let's try another wee experiment. Same thing. Concentrate very, very hard on the music. Let a minute go by, and another one, listen, hard ….. concentrate, breathe deeply and listen to the sound of two middle-class Glasgow boys trying to sound black and ........ ask yourself ....... Why?

After a decade of producing derivative soul, the brothers decided it was time to turn their attentions to the world of Jazz. 52nd Street, one of the best Internet Jazz sites describes their "Jazz not Jazz" album as "a bit too trite and predictable to be of much interest." Mmmmm, wonder where we've heard that before.

Hue & Cry are essentially the Kane Brothers. From Coatbridge, they have had a couple of minor pop hits and supported Madonna and U2. Their heyday was in the late 80's and early 90's.

Through Pat Kane, there is also a pretention to New Labour and the voice of modern left-leaning politics in Scotland.

The following quote from Pat Kane's Web site is, for this reviewer, sufficient reason to condemn the man to a lifetime of touring with The Krankies. In an article discussing Noam Chomsky, a giant amongst left-leaning liberal intelligensia, Kane writes; "he's like a reliable chardonnay in the winerack of geopolitical punditry".

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