Having taken the Coachella Festival by storm and teamed up with respected producers Pelle Hendricsson and Eskil Lovestrom (Hell Is For Heroes, Poison The Well), THE KINISON come with scrupulously buffed-up US alt.rock credentials.
Sadly, though, these Illinois-via-California boys are little more than post-hardcore US underground cannon fodder, and despite a brief flourish at the start, their debut album "What Are You Listening To?" is largely indistinguishable from the worst of the mulch the States is flinging at us in the name of Emo these days.
Admittedly The Kinison are broadly from the math-rock wing rather than the Less Than Jake/ Jimmy Eat World clones, but that still fails to save them here. Riffsmart opener "The Farm & The Girls" is angry and angular and briefly recalls firebrands like Fugazi and Shudder To Think, while the strident staccato attack of "Lake Calmern Is Full" features the kind of bitten-off guitars this reviewer always responds to. But beyond that, the album's main purpose appears to be attmepting to induce migraines.
The vocals are the main stumbling block. In a few cases, the band have good ideas (the bouncy, metallic angst of "Oh Boy, That Girl Can Move" springs to mind), but the constant use of the 'singer's throat-scouring screech soon destroys any possible melodic hooks. Elsewhere, the punk-by-numbers cast-off riffing on tracks like "American Collectibles" and "Every Genius Has Their Hang-Ups" is simply laughably derivative.
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It's difficult the pinpoint the album's absolute nadir, though surely both "I Have Something To Say" and "You Kissed Lilly" are both pretenders to the throne. The first is merely explosive bilge of the lowest order, while the lyrically peurile "You Kissed Lilly" ("You just kissed Lilly, you just kissed a whore") is the sort of nyah nyah playground-level toss this lot should have left behind when they graduated to long pants. Mind you, I assume The Kinison are still wearing shorts anyway. Dude.
No, I'm sorry, but aside from possessing an excellent drummer, The Kinison are entirely forgettable. The question "What Are You Listening To?" merely begs the answer: something stimulating, charismatic and forward thinking, not the cretinous shite The Kinison obviously feel they can get away with peddling.
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