Chimpomatic

Thunderbirds Are Now!

Make History

It's growing on me this one. I was ready to dismiss it as an immature effort from a band with a terrible name. However, as a teacher friend assures me; sometimes it's the cheekiest students you warm to the most, you just have to look that bit harder for their strengths and qualities.

It starts off promisingly; the picked guitar and vocal harmonies of album opener, 'Panthers in Crime', are a walk in The Shins territory, but that is as well behaved and grown up as the record gets. Once the drums kick in after a minute or so, it's all hyperactive energy and fun, fun, fun! Track 2, 'The Veil Comes Down', stays dangerously close to the Mcfly (band, not Parkinson's Ambassador) school of conventional, guitar pop. But they pull it back after that. If all this adolescent bounding around and Ryan Allen's nasal singing, make them obvious contemporaries of The Spinto Band, then 'Open Us Up' is their 'Oh Mandy' with its 'Woah-oh Woah-oh' shouty chorus. This is the one that will probably jump out of the record and onto the indie radio stations.

It's more of the same for the next few songs. The dubiously titled 'Shit Gold' is possibly the most interesting on the album. Here, they take a few breaths and slow things down a bit - letting the bass, irregular drums and quirky little synth noises drive things forward.

It is a fun album, they are pretty tight and have a confident sound, but I can't help thinking they have better songs in them. I'd have to check out their previous two albums to see if this is true or not. Were I to write a school report for this Detroit 4-piece, it would read "Could try harder to release their obvious potential." Or as Allen himself sings on 'PPL R ANMLS' "We gave you a chance, now give us a results!" Ditto.


Links

Official Website
French Kiss
MySpace

Tags

#chimpovich
#Music

30th Oct 2006 - Tumblr

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