Stereophonics: Pull the Pin

In the name of journalism (well, bloggerism) I just listened to the new Stereophonics album so you don't have to. Well, I listened to the first 30 seconds of each song, does that count? Don't be fooled by the cliched but quite jaunty cover: you aren't going to get a big lipsticky kiss, you're gonna get your soul sapped.
It still makes me sad, just because I LOVED their debut album so much. Local Boy In a Photograph can still make me cry if it's a bad day. A Thousand Trees was an amazing, singalong debut single. Performance and Cocktails was also a great pop album. I wish Kelly Jones had died shortly after that, and then I wouldn't have to feel embarrassed if the Stereophonics show up on my last.fm. I recall one heady night with my flatmate smashing up the JEEP CD with a hammer. Oh, the days before downloading. We meant to post it back to them, but it wasn't really worth the stamp.
It makes me genuinely sad that Kelly Jones is such a cunt. He has the best eyebrows. It also makes me sad that he used to have such a cool voice but now he just sounds like a whiny, petulant, droney numbskull over some horrible guitars. Worse: he's now going all 'political' (i.e. sweeping statements that any Sun reader could put more eloquently).
The songs range from dirgy rock to dirgy tuneless ballad-y one. That's your lot. There is so little to differentiate them. I tried, honest. Oh, OK, 'I could lose ya' included the words 'you could go down on me in a theatre' last used by Alanis Morissette, another famous cunt. Absolutely awful.
I cannot believe this band still has fans, I really can't. It doesn't deserve them. Now I have to go listen to something else, quick. It's the aural equivalent of getting touched up on the tube.