Sometimes, doing this sort of reviewing thing, you have to repeat yourself. Maybe it’s due to a particular slew of bands that sound very similar, so all the same adjectives jump out at you, and you feel compelled to use them regardless of how many times you’ve reiterated the same points before. Or maybe it’s lazy reviewing, late at night when you’ve lost your thesaurus.
This seems to be the same with the music business in general. Either it’s due to a genuine need for a band to make the same music they’re familiar with…or it’s lazy; recreating the most marketable moments from their favourite albums ad nauseum.
And it’s hard to tell what camp Sing It Loud have their tent pitched. On the one hand, the music they’ve created is competent, catchy and likeable with hooks in all the right places. On the other, it’s generic and forgettable with a blandness that’s hard to forgive.
Take a bunch of lyrics about girls, harmless riffs, slight electronica and some trendy clothing…and you have yourself a pop-punk band. Cut and paste simplicity, heard it all before – from countless bands since over the last 10-12 years or so.
It’s not all bad, of course, it’s just that these is nothing new here. It’s unremarkable, hard to really fault but equally difficult to recommend. The Starting Line without the earnest lyrics… All-American Rejects without the immediate hooks, Motion City Soundtrack without the quirkyness… it’s not so much pushing the envelope as it is shooting the envelope a knowing glance before pilfering it’s contents.
I’d hint at ‘Fade Away’ being the best on offer here, closely followed by ‘Don’t Save Me’, simply because they reminded me most of bands I’ve liked in the past, when it wasn’t quite so worn. But honestly, the repetitiveness is killing what enjoyment there is. I understand not every band can be a genre buster, and maybe my standards/expectations of young bands are set too high…but its one thing to make a ‘genre’ album, and a whole other thing to rely on what’s come before. Familiarity breeds contempt, usually…here it simply breeds an overwhelming ‘Meh’.
So then, generally passable pop-punk rock for fans of any band that also falls into that category, from Jimmy Eat World to Say Anything…just don’t expect anything revolutionary and you should be fine.
I really didn’t want to have to be so negative here. Hopefully with a few more years under their belt, Sing It Loud can turn their obvious talent into something more than they are currently producing.
Rating: 
