The Chemists: 'Hear Our Song'
The Chemists are who appear to be band making waves. Support slots alongside such prestigious names as The Music and indie-stalwarts Feeder have seen the 5-piece build a small army of loyal followers and elevate their popularity to a level so promising that their debut album is due out any day now courtesy of Distiller Records.
The latest offering from the Bristol based bunch of indie-rockers is ‘Hear Our Song’, a record that can best be described as a perfectly simple, straight-forward dance-floor tune, the sort to get people singing and dancing. But there’ll be a lot of songs released this year and the next that get people dancing by a lot of bands that are around for less time than Starsailor (They’re back, can you believe that? Nice chaps…) – are The Chemists any different?
On this evidence alone the answer is probably not. ‘Hear Our Song’ is catchy, it’s fluid and it comes in at that perfect anthem time of just under three minutes but I just don’t see anyone loving it. I don’t see it as evidence as to the burgeoning skills of a potential superstar band, one that can roll out albums over the next decade that continue to surprise and excite. No, to me, The Chemists appear as though they’ll prove a little one-dimensional to the extent that longevity seems unlikely.
Musically, the tune draws on more than one genre to pull together an up-tempo introduction, making clear what you’re going to hear for the next couple of minutes. There are hints of The Holloways, The Foo Fighters and Fall Out Boy here; it’s kind of like they sat down in front of MTV2 one wet Wednesday and tried to extract the best bits from the most popular music of that week and turn them into something marketable. To be fair, they’ve done a decent enough job – the vocal is delivered with snarling arrogance and conviction and the chorus does what every chorus should, the guitars work well with the drum and bass section and it’s all tidily produced and housed in a nice petroleum-green cardboard sleeve. It really is a lovely sleeve you know.
This single is effective enough to give them their day in the sun and will please many a young impressionable soul looking for a hook to latch on to but it just doesn’t have the backbone, the balls and the bravado of a band that are about to change your life. Average stuff.
5/10
Words: Benjamin Coley
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