Cowboys from Outerspace, "Sleeping with Ghosts"

This is a competent but ultimately uninspiring release from the French group Cowboys from Outerspace. Too many bar room rock clichés make it hard to enjoy this album on a plane any higher than a background beat to tap your foot to. It’s not a bad album, it’s just not exciting.

 

Nova Express

Sleeping with Ghosts is an entertaining album, it is back-to-basics rock played with plenty of conviction. The songs are nothing particularly special but they’re just enough above average to keep me listening to the album. There is a solid scene of French bands that all do this sort of garage rock and Cowboys from Outerspace would be far from the worst. They have moments where I really want to grab my guitar and play along but there’s never a point where they go from just another rock band to something more exciting, they could tickle my rock out bone a lot more.

One thing about this band (and a lot of other French bands) is that their singer sings in English. I don’t understand why so many French bands do this. Some can pull it off but many sound like extras from Allo, Allo. Their vocalist slips a few times into this trap and it’s a bit off-putting. I can’t help but feel that these songs would be a lot better in their mother tongue. Aside from that, Sleeping with Ghosts doesn’t have any major faults, it ticks all the boxes when it comes to rocking out but the band don’t do enough to stand out from the crowd.