Whiskey In the Winter Is On January 27 - Tickets On Sale Now

Radio 4

With the Sights and a Dozen Dead Roses. Tuesday, March 1, at the Grog Shop.

By Mikael Wood on Wed, Feb 23, 2005 at 4:00 am

Moolaadé Screens this weekend at the Cinematheque

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Radio 4's Stealing of a Nation has not aged well since its release last September. For starters, "Cut your losses and get the votes/Come fall they change every single quote," a hopeful lyric from "Nation," just sounds kind of depressing since November.

And that's not all. Though much of the album revives early-'80s punk-funk with the slick production sensibility of early-'90s dance-pop, Stealing doesn't feel stale because it revives those things; it feels stale because it feels stuck in that long-ago epoch of 2002 and 2003, when reviving early-'80s punk-funk with the slick production sensibility of early-'90s dance-pop still seemed like a good idea. Stealing is synth-saddled dance-rock without the Rapture's paranoid throb or the Killers' wit or Franz Ferdinand's louche sass; there's nothing to its retro stylings but good intentions, which are rarely enough. Hopefully, Tuesday night they'll inject the CD's songs with new life. Or new old life.