Friday 16 November 2012

When We Were Giants - Loose Lips & Sinking Ships

Album review by KevW


You're probably sick of us banging on about bands from the US's bountiful East Coast music scene, so let us introduce you to (unless you're way ahead of us and know them already) Boston duo When We Were Giants. And no, this isn't another US indie-type band, these guys are from the real Boston, the one in Lincolnshire. 'Loose Links & Sinking Ships' is their second album, although the press info describes them as "talented kids", so we'll assume they're still relatively young, probably teenagers. The pair of Greg Simpson and Kane Storr take care of business themselves; from the writing, playing all the instruments and production. We can only speculate on the "kids" part of the statement, but the "talented" part seems to ring true. Oh, the artwork? They did that too.

It's all very well teaming up with your mate and recording some tunes, hundreds of people do that (you should try going through our inbox every morning) but more often than not the results leave a little to be desired. No so here. They discuss getting together and writing songs, gradually improving and delving a little into their journey so far on (deep breath) 'There's No Mountains In This Neighbourhood But The View From The Roof Isn't Bad'. It's the kind of melodic punk-pop that would now disparagingly be lumped in with emo, but only because that genre's meaning has changed. When We Were Giants write good songs, although they do champion emo heroes such as Jimmy Eat World and Angels And Airwaves.

Whether it's their British take on such sounds or a generally different approach to writing, it would be doing them a disservice piling them in with that crowd (mind you, Jimmy Eat World have their moments). It's an indie/punk/pop concoction that they make, and they do it well, our only suggestion would be relying a little less on imitation and moving more towards developing their own sound, they have the ability. 'From A Movie Reel' and '...Where I Want To Be' show that they have more than one trick up their sleeves. Unless the dreaded artistic differences or other personal divisions come between these guys (and we hope they don't), in a few years they might just become those giants after all.




When We Were Giants' website

Stream or download the album





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