Graham Reid | | <1 min read
Kingston: Lotto
If you don't listen to ads you'd not know these locals with cloud-piercing shouty choruses have songs helping sell V, Pepsi, KFC and a Ford Kuga.
Both those latter hook-filled heavyweights (Good Good Feeling and You Want It? respectively) are on this 14 song album which is big on “whoa-whoa” or “oh-ho-oh” hooks, forward momentum and songs which drill themselves home on machine-gun drum fills and burn-out guitars.
Which is thrilling – singer Dan Gibson is genuinely powerful and distinctive -- but the sheer breathlessness and those overused “whoa-ho” shouts shows them mining a narrow New Wave vein (Round We Go a chip off the Vapours).
Although they can be just as convincing when they step away from the obvious, as on the more measured Sincere and the psychedelic-pop of I'll See the World where guitarist Scott Cleary too-briefly reveals another side.
(Although I think the opener I'm Gonna Be With the King has a melodic line which borrows a mite to much from Spul Asylum's Runaway Train.)
With American production sheen and mixing, this – which sounds very international – certainly comes searing out of the speakers (turn it up to 11 and stand back) and you can't deny they know their way around a short, sharp adrenalin-fueled pop-rock song.
Especially if it works in a celebratory, air-punching and shouty “Oh-ho-oh”.
Like the sound of this? Then check out this.
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