Labels: Firefly
Review by: Andy Malcolm
Yes, the band name is terrible. And leaves them open to nasty mean people like me calling them the “Get Up Kids Near Water”, although comparisons to that band are neglible now that they have adjusted the intro to “Post Scriptum” to not resemble the intro to “I’m A Loner Dottie” quite so much.
Opening track crunches out of the speakers with a thumping rock riff straight from the Texas Is The Reason archives, and then heads off in the melodic post-hardcore direction favoured by many popular bands of today. It’s chock full of head bobbingly good riffage, and bag-pack-tuggingly good vocals, but is marred by the ill advised scream-age – as ever, when this kind of band that scream, they sound very very silly. “When It Comes To You, I Step On Cracks” has an excellent stop-start structure early on, but is let down by the heavier chorus where they scream annoyingly and use that horrible metal riff where it all goes JUD JUD JUD. Eww. Best track on here is “Telegram”, by far the catchiest and most melodic outing they make over the 5 tracks. Rather reminds of Clairmel but with much less rough vocals, apart from the screamy bit, which is the only time it works on this record, bringing to mind I Hate Myself. Final track “Gone” is also rather tasty, got me swaying in my seat anyway.
Overall, mix up Far with Sunfactor with Texas Is The Reason and you are looking at Kids Near Water. Very adept musically, just a little lacking overall to my much abused ears. They’ll slot very nicely into the UK scene, that’s for sure, and if you like the post-hardcore / indie rock bands that Revelation put out, then you’ll probably go nuts for this. Can’t say fairer than that now.