As every good Marvel fan knows, with great power comes great responsibility. Gary Go clearly has great musical power – he has a talent for a number of instruments and can seemingly swap them around with ease, tinkering here on the piano, strumming there on the guitar, etc. But darkness came the day Gary Go decided he would use this talent to make songs that sound, well, a bit like Keane. He does have a good hand in creating epic-sounding, structured tunes and, towards the end of the album, there’s some far more exciting ideas going on with strings and rhythm.
But the swaggering self-confidence of numbers like ‘Wonderful’ make uncomfortable bedfellows with the seemingly worried lyrics of the likes of ‘Life Gets in the Way’ – giving a sheen of insincerity. To be fair, though, Gary Go isn’t doing anything particularly wrong given his goal, assisted by what will no doubt be a very successful support slot run with Take That, is clearly chart domination. I have no doubts that this will sell in the thousands and you’ll be hearing him on the radio soon – but Gary Go is unlikely to make it into the collections of any ITM? readers.