This writer has previously found Anglophile-leaning New Yorkers FIVE O’CLOCK HEROES’ sharp and spiky pop schtick pretty damn appealing when taken in rapid-fire bursts of 2 minutes 30 or thereabouts. Indeed, their bright and breezy string of singles have suggested they’ve got what it takes when it comes to peppering the radio with good, old-fashioned new-wave/ power pop.
Inevitably, though, the discipline required to hold our attention across a more demanding 40 minutes tests their character significantly more and while their long-awaited debut album “Bend To The Breaks” certainly has its’ moments, the overall result leans towards less than resounding success, if not downright failure.
Yes, it’s difficult to pick holes with either Girls Against Boys’ stalwart Eli Janney’s crisp production or that string of singles which are reprised again here. ‘White Girls’’ disco textures, wandering basslines and killer chorus make its’ appeal impossible to refute; recent single ‘Time On My Hands’ is crunchily irresistible and still the best song The Knack never wrote and the finely-wrought opener ‘Head Games’ has the sort of taut, economic riffs and metronomic drums that are pathologically incapable of failing to score on any self-respecting indie dancefloor.
The thrills don’t immediately dry up when you look beyond, either. Indeed, ‘Number Again’s elegantly struck guitars suggest FOCH can still score when they slow it up and smoulder a bit and the quirky ‘Anybody Home’ has more than a hint or two of that snappy, white boy-reggae thing the likes of The Police and Joe Jackson employed to ensure regular visits to the Top 20 around the time the 70s careered into the 80s.
Unfortunately, while I’d bet my bottom dollar on FOCH continuing as a great singles band for the foreseeable, the rest of ‘Bend To The Breaks’ suggests their stamina and invention is going to be found wanting when it comes to these pesky album-length outings. One of the weirdest things about them is that frontman Anthony Ellis is both an asset and a liability. He’s an asset in that he’s the songwriter and he clearly knows a thing or twenty-three about sending peppy, upbeat tunes down the conveyor belt, but he’s a liability in the sense that by track four (‘Run To Her’) his pinched, straining voice is already grating and his tendency to end up sounding like an awkward, high-pitched amalgam of David Byrne and a young Sting doesn’t exactly help matters, especially when it only gets further entrenched as the album spins itself out.
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In itself, this is irritating enough, but as the album zigzags towards its’ conclusion, it becomes difficult to tell between songs such as ‘Skin Deep’, ‘In Control’ and the annoyingly chirpy (and hopefully not self-explanatory) ‘Corporate Boys’ simply because they sound utterly interchangeable and thus almost parodic in their execution. There again, we should probably thank our lucky stars that the unlisted ‘extra’ track ( a woozy, extremely dodgy acoustic reggae skank) didn’t officially make the cut, as it’s the epitome of a nadir in anyone’s language.
Ultimately, then, ‘Bend To The Breaks’ is not in great shape as it coughs and wheezes its’ way to the chequered flag. Advance notice will have you believe it deserves its’ place up there with everyone’s new wave heroes, but believe me, ‘Get The Knack’, ‘Look Sharp’ or ‘Outlandos D’Amour’ this is not, for all the hot air and extensive tours that surround it. Personally, I think I’ll stick to the singles.
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