Labels: Adagio830
Review by: Alex Deller
Truth be told it’d probably have been better if Andy had reviewed this since I’m sure he’d know better where these Big Kids sit amidst the current crop of backwards-gazing indiemo, but, hey, you fuckers are stuck with me so you’ll get what you get. To my ears these guys sound like a big sloppy mix of mid-90s indie and late-90s indiemo, bringing to mind Superchunk, Braid and the hoarse, tuckered-out sadness of the Blacktop Cadence, all of which recalls a time when certain folk (ahem) were trawling the Subjugation mailouts for anything that might’ve been half as good as ‘Frame And Canvas’. ‘Phone Home’ ultimately isn’t, and while they have some nice tunes, some solid melodies and the ability to neatly conjure a sense of people, places and opportunities missed or left behind things’re rather marred by an inherent awkwardness and a knack for rescuing defeat from the jaws of victory just when you think they’ve latched onto a killer track. This, I think, hinges on the singer’s stream-of-consciousness lyrics and apparent need to have all the words he wants in a row rather than have them necessarily fit together in a song, and while his dedication to avoiding the strictures of the verse/chorus/verse formula is, to a degree, admirable it ultimately needs a bit more work before things are 100% nailed. Don’t get me wrong, this is certainly nice and cuts like ‘Catcher’s Mitt’ are just about there, but in the meantime Big Kids most likely won’t be supplanting any of the acts I’ve already mentioned when you next feel like wistfully watching leaves twist lazily in the autumn breeze or mistily tearing up old photos.