If you've ever travelled to America, one of the first things you probably noticed was the large amount of amount of faceless rock music that occupies the radio. I never realised until I went there quite how far apart English and American music really is. English music is basically "pop", American music is "Rock". Everything about it is different, yet somehow I hadn't noticed. Although there's not a huge amount of current English music that I like, a few weeks of solid "Rock" on American radio is enough to have you begging for a taste of good old English bands like Keane and Coldplay - or desperate to hear something a bit off the wall like the Specials or Madness..
So how disappointing then when an English band comes along and sounds exactly like a dull, corporate American rock band. Which is exactly where Funeral for a Friend fit in. There's no subtlety in this record at all - its designed for 16 year old American kids wearing their baseball caps backwards, who want to upset their parents by buying an album with a "Parental Advisory" sticker on it. I've heard all the guitar lines before, the song structures are virtually non-existent. The vocals whine incessantly. I can listen to as much loud music as the next person (admittedly I'm practically deaf these days because of it..), but this just gives me a headache..
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"I'm tired of being the good guy" goes the song, but I suspect that's exactly what they are actually - nice clean living boys with lots of money from Atlantic to spend - I searched high and low for something offensive without any luck, and the fact that there are three pages of "thank you"'s on the sleeve says it all really - if you're bad boys, shouldn't you hate everyone?!
So if you work in a record store and you have to stock this, just file under "pre-programmed pseudo-American rock" - you'll sell loads..
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