Labels: City of Gold – Get This Right
Review by: Joe Callaghan
This little EP is pressed on one of those half transparent CD’s, like the Fig 4.0 album. They are totally neat, aren’t they? The transparent half is just a waste really though. A lot like 12 inch singles. It’s just plain silly, but nice to look at. That’s what it’s all about. Cosmetic aesthetics. Music is rubbish.
Daylight, in their press release, get compared to Hot Water Music and Small Brown Bike, which I can only assume is based on the raspy, rugged vocal. Other than that, they bare very little resemblance. They are most likely to take influence from that niche, but they stack up a lot closer to this new breed of slick gruff punk like Polar Bear Club and Transit with their Stadium Rock hooks and the uncompromising grit and grind. They don’t have the groove of the rhythm section that Hot Water Music boasts. Instead, that is replenished by foot-stomping hooks, in which you could easily envisage a crowd of pumping fists, from shirtless, bearded ruffians no less. Whilst stomping your feet and pumping your first like some sort of aggressive spoiled child is a bit of a lark, it does come across a bit Bon Jovi at times, and luckily, there’s only 5 tracks to knuckle down to. A full length of foot-on-the-monitor/mic-in-the-crowd brusque rock and roll would probably ware thin quickly, most probably because you’re fully aware of what you’re due to get. A couple of verses and choruses of mid-paced pop punk, followed up by the Def Leppard break down, minus the pouring of any sugar on anyone.
It’s a reasonable effort though, but gruff punk has been done to death, and it takes something a little special to stand out now. I’m rarely wowed by this approach, unless they have something a bit more genuine to offer, and semi-expecting the singer to break into Don’t Stop Believing isn’t one of those things. However, that’s my own personal cynicism clouding my judgement of what is a pretty good record. It is up to a standard which will get kids chirping on about them up until and beyond the next Fest, and its easy to see why. Up the punx and all that.