Labels: Revelation
Review by: Andy Malcolm
OMG OMG THE NEW ELLIOTT CD OMG!! THESE GUYS ARE SO EMO!
Well, they sound like they have a girl singer, and they sound British. This is what happens to American ‘hardcore’ kids when they get old. When they get bored of playing fast and fucking their voices up, they throw their entire wardrobe out, get a new one, and decide that they now want to sound like some of the bands on the records that they have bought over the past few years sound. Because when you are in a hardcore band, you have got to be DIY and scene as fuck to want to listen to hardcore when you’re not playing it. It must get really boring. So you you’re off listening to, I don’t know, some cool 60’s garage bands or jazz or krautrock or british indie and they end up thinking “shit dude, I want to play some shit like this”. What Elliott obviously did was listen to 80’s and early 90’s British indie rock, probably lots of that shoegaze stuff, and lots of music fronted by people with annoying vocals. Musically they are ridiculously good at what they are doing and slick as a Trustkill scenester kiddie’s dyed black hair. It’s very atmospheric and has mega production to give it a huge sound, and if you poked with me a stick (preferably not a poison tipped one) I would probably tilt my head to one side and say “It’s not all that bad actually”. It’s definitely better than anything else this band have done. It’s like the natural progression from that early 2000’s emo-rock thing, when the genre went wrong. Where everything had become overblown and overwrought and sounded stupid, where bands sort production over passion and sincerity. Yet this record is so extraordinarly overblown and pompous that it’s gone back 360. It’s what all those shitty ass post-’emo’ bands needed to do. Give the music even more pretense and get a mindblowingly good recording. Whether Elliott did this on purpose or not, I have no idea, but hey.
There is no reason why these guys shouldn’t be as big or as popular as Coldplay with something like this, because it is pretty decent and a lot of people would like it. I think if you like mainstream indie you would love this album as it is a perfect form of that genre. Whilst I am still knocking myself on the side of the head trying to dislodge the idea that even I think it’s alright. What the fuck? I’m going to give this to me Ma before I catch myself listening to it again.