1) Take a Shine to Me; 2) Superstar: 3) Stay With Me; 4) Singing ‘Bout the City; 5) Have You Ever Heard a Song; 6) Publicity Seeking Rockers; 7) I’ll Have My Way With You, Frankie; 8) All Those Days; 9) Hygiene Squad; 10) The Red Cap
The Ark fizzle out towards their end, barely making their exit known.
In Full Regalia was released in April 2010, and before the year had finished The Ark had announced they were calling it a day. In posthumous interviews frontman Ola Salo talked about how he had been struggling to find the inspiration to write any music because he felt like he had said everything he could within the context of the band, and that he would rather consider them as a great thing of the past rather than face an uncertain future; when he contacted the other members about the idea of closing up the shop, everyone realised they had all had similar thoughts. The Ark’s last album therefore isn’t a grand farewell and a curtain bow, and rather it's the result of a group of people pushing out an album out of habit even when they've already started to think about moving on.
There isn’t much to talk about In Full Regalia, because it's got little to say for itself. It's got hints of a stylistic tweak which sees The Ark shifting a little towards late 70s and early 80s soft rock vibes, giving the impression that they were still keen to avoid repeating themselves. It's just that the songs they’ve written around that sound are the weakest selection of material they've ever pulled together. They're not so poor as to the extent that they’d actively leave a negative impression, but rather In Full Regalia is more of an indifferent shrug. It’s music that doesn’t make you hit the skip button if any of the songs come up in shuffle mode, but it makes no effort to step up and engage any further than that. The choruses don't hook, the melodies don't stick, and Ola Salo’s writing well has truly run out, just as he had confessed. At the start of the decade he wielded a razor sharp wit and laced his lyrics with both heart and cheeky wordplay, but now he's succumbed to either wishy-washy nonsense or clichés like "Publicity Seeking Rockers" or “Superstar”, both of which are literally what you'd expect from the titles alone (aimless and vague celebrity culture takedown and banal motivational poster fodder, respectively). “Superstar” is arguably the weakest song here even if it is catchier than most of the other tracks, simply because it comes across as such a low-effort crowd pleaser, with its sing-along choruses running on empty despite the stomping beat trying to make the song sound bigger than it's worth. It’s a pastiche of former glories - the exact thing The Ark were fearing to become.
The Ark aren’t leaving us completely empty-handed though. “Stay With Me” is a real highlight: it’s got the strongest melody of the record and the second verse guitar line in particular is simply captivating when mixed with the hazily melancholy background textures, Salo pulls out his best vocal performance on the record and for the whole of the song the band sound genuinely inspired and engaged. It’s moodier and more restrained than most of the record and sounds like the result of a whole different writing session, but somehow ironically has more life to it than the rest of the record, which generally bounces around with a lot of energy to make up for what it lacks in other departments. "Stay With Me" is just such a great song, and it feels unfair that it's ended up practically forgotten (including by myself) just because the rest of the album turns you off touching the record. It does also kick off a minor peaking point in the record when it's followed by "Singin' Bout the City", which turns out to be the album's second most memorable cut by way of its string embellishments and an inspiredly whirlwind, tone-shifting structure. It's not a high that admittedly lasts long, but it's there.
It still surprises me that I can only list those two songs as something to give a listen for though, and barely anything else. It's clear that everyone was already over the band by the time they got together to record In Full Regalia and maybe it was just denial that made the album happen in the first place, and so no one's really brought their A-game into it - probably because they just didn't have the energy for it. To their credit, The Ark were always a strikingly charismatic band and that hasn't changed. Even when they stumbled on the previous albums, there was energy and passion that shone through which has been synonymous with them since day one - if repeat listens of In Full Regalia have shown anything is that The Ark aren't willing to phone it in, but they simply don't have much to work with here. It's an album that absolutely dies solely by being so full of sub-standard material, and it’s a shame. The Ark were such a bright and exciting flash of thunder with their early albums, and it’s actually quite sad that their last record fizzles out, barely making a ripple.
Rating: 4/10
Physical corner: Jewel case with a comprehensive lyrics +
photos booklet. I've got the basic edition - I never bothered with the deluxe edition
that came with a full magazine loaded with interviews, trivia, etc.
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