Grunge is making a bit of a comeback isn’t it. False Advertising are leading the charge for Manchester, making waves locally with their satisfyingly sweet single ‘I Don’t Know’, with its twisting verse riff and power pop chorus. The thing is, it doesn’t turn up until about halfway through their self titled debut album. It sticks out as well, a few too many of the tracks here being chunky, chugging riffs and shared vocals between vocalists Jen Hingley and Chris Warr that all work well enough, staying just the right side of interesting but just going on a bit. They’re at their best in short, sharp blasts.
Openers ‘Breaker’ and ‘Another Mention’ are prime examples, fine enough but both outstaying their welcome slightly despite being barely four minutes long. Things really get started with ‘Wasted Away’ which betrays their Britrock influences; if you’ve read a single interview with them you’ll know about their unashamed love of Reuben, a band most notable for coming up with the worst album name ever in Racecar Is Racecar Backwards. It’s followed by ‘Dozer’ which channels Lullabies To Paralyze-era Queens of the Stone Age (hugely underrated if you ask me) rather than the sub-Nirvana-isms of much of the rest of the record.
‘All Of The Above’ is a bit of an anomaly, varying things with a gentler verse and deceptively relaxed intro but again making you wish they’d mix up their song structures from the standard verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus-chorus. ‘Cold Shoulder’ actually sounds like it’s been slowed down. ‘No Good”s plodding verse causes concern that we’re in for more of the same lumpen grunge but then the divebomber of a chorus kicks in like a shot of adrenaline. When closer ‘Something Better’ kicks in, it harks back to the more widescreen feel of ‘Wasted Away’. The lovely middle eight brings a startling vulnerability, building back up to that uncharacteristically hopeful, fuzzy chorus which leaves us on a high note and hopefully points the way for things to come.
As much as their press release trumpets the “years behind the scenes working with a rich array of talent”, the unavoidable fact is that this is a band who have only been gigging since April 2015. You can’t help but feel that they’re still finding their feet, doubtlessly getting stronger, but perhaps they would have benefited from another few months of thrashing these songs out live, trimming the fat, tightening the arrangements. False Advertising is a promising debut and I’ll be listening with interest for more to come.
Release Date 04/09/2015
False Advertising Official | Facebook | Twitter | Soundcloud
Like all cis-male atopic half Welshmen, I'm a big fan of shouty indie, noisy drone and the daytime Radio 1 playlist. Outside of punk rock my primary interests are tea (white no sugar please) and beer (brown no sugar please). When I'm not writing about stuff for Silent Radio I'm occasionally doing my own stuff which you can read about at http://dead-pheasant.blogspot.com if you want (you should).
