So these guys are from UK? (Cheshire and Stoke on Trent to be precise.) I hope they wear a badge to emphasize the point for if not, our American cousins will be claiming them as their own. Anyone visiting Florida this summer is bound to hear the likes of this whenever they switch on the radio in their hired Ford convertible. Both tracks on this debut single would not be out of place in the Billboard chart. In fact, they could quite conceivably be disguised as album tracks by the likes of Panic At The Disco or Jimmy Eat World, and the UK media / radio stations would be falling over themselves to play this single.
And that to a degree is symptomatic of what’s wrong with the UK music scene – we just can’t quite grasp that we have bands here on our own fair island that, given the chance, could certainly compete with some of the big-hitters from across the Atlantic.
‘Killing Time’ is full of big vocals, big guitar and big beats. The backing harmonies are huge too. Mike Richardson’s voice verges on wailing, but in a good way! It is just overall a BIG pop-punk song, very professional sounding and exhibiting a maturity honed through constant touring and rehearsing these past two years.
‘About You Now,’ is as you may suspect, a cover of the Sugababes single! Yes indeed. For me, it was always a song that had me humming along subconsciously, without ever knowing who was singing it. That will change with this version. It’s got balls! It’s loud and rocks along although never straying too far from the original. And that got to Number One, didn’t it? Again the harmonies are strong, and the background hardcore-screams towards the end give it a slight hard-edged feel.
This deserves daytime airplay. (Better start practicing the American accents, lads!)
//Colin Jackson