Stones Roses - All For One

If X-fm's marketing hype is anything to go by, All For One, the first Stone Roses track for 21 years is the biggest thing since sliced bread. Unfortunately, it isn't.

It has all the right elements for a Stone Roses song: catchy melody, a good guitar riff, a healthy dose of reverb to to give a slightly spacey atmosphere. Where it really falls down are the lyrics. ‘Repetitive, child-like lyrics that sound like they were lifted from Liam Gallagher’s ‘maybe’ pile,' is how one Guardian commentator,  Daniel Thompson, described them.

While personally I think that's a little harsh, I understand where he is coming from. While Stone Roses lyrics are always abstract, there is normally a sense of story, or an overarching metaphor (think Waterfall, She Bangs The Drum, 10 Story Love Song). The lyrics of All For One however are a bit dull 'all for one / and one for all' sounds a bit Dave Grohl/Foo Fighters. And they don't exactly go anywhere, 'if we all join joins we could build a wall' doesn't exactly fill you with a sense of wonder or enlightenment. That being said, they are catchy - I've listened one and a half times and they are already stuck in my head - and musically the song is pretty much what you'd expect. Overall however, the song feels more album filler than comeback single.