If within ten seconds of hearing a band you’re thinking to yourself “Oh shit, Johnny Borrell and Pete Doherty have patched thing up big time, fucked, and produced this bastard child into the world”, it’s not a great start. But it really isn’t a great start. The first track starts with the chant “Eng-lish boys, Eng-lish Girls!” and descended into a Razorlight-lite tale of generic relationships over yet another indie-rock set up. Their friends will love the tunes on this EP, because they’re constructed to the genre blueprint, but if you take them out of that environment, it’s just more of the same once more. The lyrics are basic, generic, and with song titles like “English Lass” and “Annie,” you know exactly what to expect.
Over the course of these songs, you get the impression of the soundtrack to the Britain that Morrissey misses so greatly. Are we at the stage now where bands are imitating the Pigeon Detectives? Do we need lines like “Annie had a ladder in her tights right to her thighs”? It’s just more tales of working class Britain, but produced in a way that takes out any originality.
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In Manchester, bands like this try to sound like Oasis. In Liverpool it’s The Coral, or more worryingly, The Wombats. London is still trying to shake off the legacy of The Libertines, and bands like this do nothing to help it. They have their eye on the mainstream, and the mainstream are welcome to them. In many ways, though, I really hope there isn’t a place for them, and that one day the world may become more discerning.
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