Well, it was a shock to my system, I'll give 'em that...
Open your desks, take out your books, shut the fuck up and you might just learn something here today. Put that epoxy-resin down, Benson, it doesn't belong on Hedges's eyelids. Now pay attention...
Just like a game of rugger played on a freezing cold pitch at Eton, the debut album from Brighton three-piece My Device can be divided neatly into two halves. The first is a ramblingly incoherent, though thoroughly energetic melange of art pop ska; while the second is a lucid, controlled and stable collection of rockier material - though don't take that as a compliment quite yet. And as all the members of My Device are mere striplings, being only 22 years old each, there's an expected focus on school rebellion and anger but you'll find some gushingly sentimental stuff in here too.
"Get On Like A House On Fire" is all jangly guitars, off-beat percussion and wailing vocals punctuated with distorted riffs and while it's a great opener, there's a sense that this is all too familiar. With Artic Monkeys still ringing loud in the playground, My Device will have to do better to stand out from the crowd.
The single "I Was Brave Today" is pure ska-pop of which a great fuzz bass-inflected second verse is the only highlight. The guitar riffs are quasi Libertines, but you know for damn sure that Doherty & Borat would inject menace and bile into this limp, flu-infected chicken of a tune. In their hands, it'd be a preying buzzard...with an Uzi...
"Like Fools, We Believed Them" and "Dance" are frankly pretty dire. The former contains the following weak-assed diatribe: "They told us triangles are made up of three sides/They told us this knowledge would be useful in life/They told us without it we'd never get by/And just like fools we believed them". I mean, come on! You wanna decent song about growing up, guys? Check out His Holiness Alice Cooper's "I'm Eighteen" and get back to me with a five hundred word appraisal by Friday morning...or you'll get detention.
Lyrically, the latter is pretty ropey too: "We're enlightened/So don't be frightened". You're not and I was...of what was coming next. You see, by this time I was beginning to give up but was frankly surprised by what leapt out at me next. "That's All Folks" is a great melodic ode to lost love infused by a palpable poignancy that's so unambiguously absent from the earlier tracks. Yeah, the mix may be as muddy as Glastonbury's main stage after a downpour, but the vocals are strong (Todd Jordan's voice has definite affinities with Kerbdog's Cormac Battle) and the lyrics possess a youthful honesty that's rather touching.
The second half of "Nervous System" is far more cogent in both style and execution. It's as if they finally stopped messing about in the studio and got down to business after getting a damned good talking to from their producer. And that's the problem - it feels forced, as if what the guys really want to be doing is smashing shit up and having a good time, not grinding out the tunes take after take. Now I may not like this album that much but at least the first half was a mass of frenetic guitars, bombastic drums, vocals and musical styles. On the second half, they sound as fucking bored as I was during double maths.
"Stay Beautiful, Beautiful" is just plain dull, and while "Nosebleed" is at least a musically inventive oasis; it's an unfortunately arid, lyrical desert. "Aloha" is shockingly bad - again conjuring ideas of what The Libertines would have churned out if they'd been clean, sober and happy...and that's not a nice thought is it? "Kitten" is a song about a cat being fed biscuits. It's pony.
I like to think I'm a generous guy. That's why I'm rating this album a 5 instead of the 3 I was originally gonna give it. Why? Because I reckon these guys have got potential - and as our government so consistently likes to tell us, you can't turn people away from your door because of just one fuck up and a record of bad attendance. If My Device put in a couple of years of graft, get a decent producer and devour the collected lyrics of Alice Cooper and Stephen Morrissey, I reckon they'll turn out okay.
Class dismissed.