Labels: Day By Day – First in the Air
Review by: Andy Malcolm
What is up with these bloody deers? First Elk Blood, now Moose Blood. It’s probably some reference to something that I am too old to get… a bit like the music here I am afraid. Moose Blood play some happy go lucky indie pop with two different singers and driving guitars. It’s all a bit too much second LP Get Up Kids for the likes of me, mixed up with Everyone Everywhere. The whiney dual vocals don’t really work for me, and just scroll through all my other reviews, I dig a whiney vocal, but these are just not the sort of thing I go for. On one song the guy is totally ripping off some Empire! Empire! man wails, and there are moments when they give it some dreadful Brit indie vocals, all south-east England accents and wotnot. There’s also some grim lyrics (“Cos you’re leaving in the morning and I’d really just like to fuck” – I think? I am good at mishearing lyrics). They reference “Dashboard Confessional”, and then name drop “American Football” in the otherwise nicely paced “Carbis Bay” to help clue you in as to where they’re coming from, in case it wasn’t obvious enough already. This EP pretty catchy with it’s poppy leanings, but it rather appropriates the bits of a genre that I was never excited by, and I don’t think they were ever going to really catch my attentions with these vocals, but for the most part the music is decent. So there you go. It’s a fair stab, but it doesn’t feature any of the things that really make me connect with a band. I’m probably about 15 years too old to be listening to something like this with anything more than a passing appreciation, but if you are younger and get what they are doing, this band will probably be exactly your thing.